stormstrike, starfall.

[Wyrmbreaker] This deep down, digging into earth is a treacherous proposition. Every rock pried from its socket, every pawful of dirt pried away, has its echoes in the debris and dirt raining down from the ceiling, pattering on the floor. Onto those twitching bones and quivering claws. Onto their fur, all the mottled colors of their small, myriad band.

A last swipe of Wyrmbreaker's claws into the dirt and he feels something on the other hand - another handpaw reaching through even as he does, fingers tangling, long claws nicking his palm. He draws back and there's a face he's never seen before pushing through, erupting through dirt and stone. There's no question about it: this is Stormstrike, Starfall, and Wyrmbreaker rears back just in time before

she rips through, hits the ground on all fours, leaps, leaps for her beta's throat.

There's no time to think, no time to consider. Instantly, Wyrmbreaker wheels on his hindlegs and leaps himself -- shoulderchecking Stormstrike from her target, knocking her aside if he can.

"STOP!" Wyrmbreaker's own snarl is a deeper sound than the female's, ringing in the stone-strewn cavern. It's pure command: deliberate and unflinching, all the force of personality he can muster.

[phanerothyme] He is a Fostern Ahroun going against another Fostern Ahroun, and she does not get knocked aside so easily. Stormstrike whips her head around and snaps her jaws at Wyrmbreaker even as Key of Heaven is bristling backwards. She is no whelp. She is on the verge of war, and behind her in whatever pocket of earth she was in they can see a pile of bones, a skull with a third empty socket in the middle of its brow. But right now, wisdom says not to take eyes off of the Alpha of the Blackwings.

"MY pack!" she snarls at him, threat as implicit in her barking as strength is intimated in her form. "You --"

Key of Heaven is running. The chambers are shuddering, warning of collapse, and Key of Heaven is bolting back towards the tunnel as fast as his long legs can carry him. A wind spirit tying Lukas's mind to theirs flies suddenly away and the remaining Blackwings look dumbfounded, lost,

as Stormstrike jumps over Wane and takes off after the Theurge, roaring, kicking up dirt behind her.

Dirt falls from the roof, showering Wyrmbreaker, Wane, Threnody and Sunthief.

[Wyrmbreaker] No time to think. No time to consider. No time to argue, to debate, to explain. MINE, the female snarls at him, and Wyrmbreaker snaps his teeth right back at her, vicious, instinctive --

-- whipping away the same instant she does, leaping after Key of Heaven as he flees. The rest of the pack is stunned. Wyrmbreaker spares just enough time to bark back at them:

"Follow! Run!"

before he's racing after Key of Heaven and Stormstrike again, scrabbling up that narrow tunnel, jostling for position with the Ahroun, chasing the Theurge.

[phanerothyme] He doesn't have to tell them twice. Truth be told, he doesn't have to tell them once. Garou can live through a lot -- being buried alive is still not a pleasant prospect. So as soon as Lukas goes after Key and Stormstrike, hot on the latter's heels, he can hear the other three churning up earth behind him, jostling right up against him. They do not like key and Stormstrike being so far ahead. They do not like Wyrmbreaker being between them and their leaders. They do not, quite frankly, like any of this.

Who would?

All too quickly the tunnel narrows, but not before Wyrmbreaker makes clear his intent to shoulder Stormstrike aside and go for Key. She very, very nearly, frenzies. It's in the air like the shocked silence following a crack of lightning hitting the path before you. Her black eyes are wild with rage, and if he were ever her quarry, if he were anything but a stranger to her now -- one who helped dig her out, though at the moment it might seem she's ignorant of that fact -- she might simply snap and go for his throat, too.

Stormstrike just pushes back against him, roaring wordlessly at him though her intent is clear: how dare he. And what the fuck is he thinking? But she continues on after Key of Heaven, far ahead now

because he got a head start. Backed away even while they were still digging. Dug slower. Ran as soon as she lunged outward, took the opportunity afforded by Lukas stopping her to bolt. And it doesn't help, suddenly, that when Lukas jostles with Stormstrike, the Blackwings behind him nip at his heels, bark at him, snap their jaws with a third of the ferocity their Alpha has.

They are still going for blood when they bite at him. "Go!" and that's Threnody, barking it out, bringing up the rear though his sister and brother are snarling at Lukas. It isn't clear who he's talking to: the two of them, or to the challenging Ahroun.

The chamber Stormstrike was in crashes to nothing, and the chamber they fought the skeletons in begins to follow it, the earth returning to solidity like a cliffside eroding in seconds rather than centuries. Lukas is still at pace with Stormstrike, unable to reach Key

and the tunnel begins to narrow.

[Wyrmbreaker] They have seconds. Seconds before there's simply not enough room for two Hispos shoulder to shoulder. Before there's not enough room, even, for two wolves shoulder to shoulder. Wyrmbreaker moves in lockstep with the stranger, his female counterpart -- paws reaching for ground, churning it to dust in his wake as he lunges forward.

She's silent. Driven. He speaks:

"Give way! Iceriver-rhya sent me to help -- let me. If you kill him now and your cause is unjust, the Sept will see you punished and your pack will have no Alpha, no Beta. Let me take him instead. I promise you, if you have cause -- "

the tunnel narrow enough to brush at his shoulder now, to squeeze him flank to flank with Stormstrike,

" -- if you show me cause, I won't stand in the way of your vengeance."

[phanerothyme] It's pretty clear, after about two words, that Stormstrike isn't listening. She's running.

[Wyrmbreaker] Who knows what flashes through Wyrmbreaker in those few split-instants he has left. Who knows what he weighs against what, what lives he hangs in the balance, what final tip of the scales makes him decide.

With a snarl -- part frustration, part fury -- Wyrmbreaker falls behind, letting Stormstrike take the lead. He's so very, very close behind, though, staying firmly on her tail.

[phanerothyme] None of them know him well enough to guess why he does what he does, and no one who knows him is even here. Distantly, Sinclair and Katherine and Asha can sense his frustration as though it bleeds out through the edges of his mind. Right there in the tunnel with him, no one is thinking much about why -- why Wyrmbreaker does what he does, why Stormstrike attacked Key, why Key ran so instantaneously -- but simply how: how to get out of here alive.

It's possible Stormstrike is the only one who isn't concerned with that right now. Her attention is narrowed to one singular goal: to catch up to Key of Heaven, to kill him, to eat his throat, to crush his heart in her jaws. Kill him.

Lukas, better than anyone, knows the source of that rage. Doesn't know if Stormstrike reaches that peak easily or not, doesn't know if she's controlled and cold, doesn't know anything that her own pack didn't already tell him, and that was -- in the end -- little enough.

They run. Behind them the earth shudders. Threnody roars as something hits his flank, bruising him or worse. He runs on anyway, pushing Wane ahead of him, not letting Sunthief fall behind. The Ragabash has no problem keeping up with Wyrmbreaker and Stormstrike, though. And she is gaining on Key -- past her, Wyrmbreaker cannot see the Theurge, but he can smell him. Smell his terror. Smell how close he is to pissing himself.

Wane yelps as the tunnel narrows unexpected, grating her side against stone, tearing fur from her flesh.

They have a brief respite in the chamber they first came to with the effigy in bone, with the hulking monster that Lukas and Sunthief took out -- well, that Lukas took out. It threw Sunthief into a wall. Ah, memories.

Key goes towards the tunnel they came down initially. Gaia only knows where the others lead. One already looks caved in. It doesn't matter. They hit the cavern where perhaps two, maybe three Garou can coexist, and for a split second it looks like Stormstrike is going to take her chance to finally overcome Key, pin him down, and tear his head off --

a flicker flash of rage, and then she bites at his tail, at his heels, snarling, harrying him into the tunnel towards the surface instead.

[Wyrmbreaker] A moment to breathe, only not. In that chamber where that first battle occurred, the last vestiges of Wyrmbreaker's rage still curl in the air. Stormstrike stretches out her neck to bite at her packmate and Wyrmbreaker's lips curl back from his teeth, ready to leap on her, leap on both of them, do something,

but she only harries Key of Heaven onward. Behind her, Wyrmbreaker lets out a pant of surprise. Then it's onward and upward, tunnels branching off -- a dim curiosity in Wyrmbreaker's mind, wondering where they lead, wondering what was behind Stormstrike in her prison of earth, but

no time now. They race onward, tunnels collapsing behind them, shuddering and unstable to begin with; tumbling down from the very force of their harried exit, not to mention the collapse at their core.

There's light ahead. Lukas thinks it might be moonlight.

[phanerothyme] [Evens are good. Odds are bad.]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6

[phanerothyme] When you're running for your life it is very easy to feel alone. At some point the need for air, the threat of losing it, becomes the driving force for everything. The need is more potent than thirst, more visceral than sex, more instantly and mindlessly terrifying than a thousand other horrors. The scent Lukas is chasing out of the earth is Key's, and it is less frightened than the tang of Wane's fear behind him. Threnody, too, closest to that crushing destruction, but something else carries him forward, carries him past the terror.

It's very dark. The strike of moonlight slanting in the tunnel is hard to focus on. There's a crash behind them and Sunthief barks in fear and panic, in pain, but he doesn't stop running. None of them do

til they're crawling out of the roots of the tree where the gauntlet was so thin, the strange weak spot in the boundary, the tree that is ancient in spirit but did not exist before (anymore) in the real world. Even that tree is withering as they haul their bodies out of the ground, shaking dirt off. Key and Stormstrike and Wyrmbreaker

and Wane, and then Sunthief

and the tunnel collapses on Threnody, just a few feet from fresh air

and Key of Heaven is suddenly pinned by Stormstrike, her teeth in his neck and her claws in his back

and when Wane yelps and starts scrabbling at the ground where her brother is buried

Stormstrike drops Key's throat and snarls at Wyrmbreaker: "HOLD HIM."

as Sunthief, too, starts digging for the Galliard.

[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker's response is not a word, not even an action, but a single, vicious, guttural bark.

Then rage burns, acrid in the night air, and he's in his largest form -- scooping huge armfuls of dirt aside, plunging searching fingers into the loam, grasping for a hand, a paw, a patch of fur, an ear -- something, anything.

[phanerothyme]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 7, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[phanerothyme] What Wyrmbreaker does instead twists in Stormstrike. That he goes to dig out her packmate alongside Wane and Sunthief. That she cannot help. It twists only for a moment.

Then she bows her head and crushes Key of Heaven's throat in her jaws. He doesn't beg. He does scream, a guttural cry of protest and rage, quickly cut off. Her fangs tear, yanking out part of his neck.

They find a paw, a patch of fur, an ear -- anything. And begin hauling Threnody out in as long as it takes Stormstrike to kill her Beta. As one, the Blackwings shudder, even as Threnody is climbing out of the ground, out of his would-be grave.

[Wyrmbreaker] Later, Wyrmbreaker will replay this moment over and over in his mind. Inspect it, sniff it, turn it over in his big hands, agonize over it.

Why he hadn't gone to hold Key of Heaven. Why he hadn't let Stormstrike do -- whatever it is she might have done. Was it because he didn't trust her to help her own, buried packmate? Was it because he thought she might simply take the opportunity to destroy Key of Heaven instead while he himself held the Theurge to the wet ground? Or --

because something in him, all the frustration and rage and confusion of that frantic flight from the bowels of the earth, culminated in a splitsecond decision based more on pride than reason, the determination that no, he would not bow to what this raging, reasonless barely-Fostern asked of him?


Later. That's later. For now, Wyrmbreaker hears -- he smells the blood, he knows -- he snarls a sharp, helpless No! but it's too late, the Alpha is savaging the Beta, and in the same instant he feels a wrist, a furred forearm, a clawed handpaw grasping his own with desperate strength.

Out, out they haul Threnody, a loamy birth from the roots of a collapsing spirit-tree. Dirt is raining down, the Galliard is tumbling out coughing and gasping, the small pack is shuddering as they pull their brother from the ground, and Wyrmbreaker turns away, crosses those few fateful feet, shoves Stormstrike off Key of Heaven with both handpaws, a singularly ferocious strike.

"WHY!" His rage nearly chokes him; it tastes like failure of the worst sort. His claws fumble with talens, gaia's breaths, bloody bandages, something -- he can formulate no question more coherent than this one: "WHY!"

[phanerothyme] It all happens so fast.

But it always happens so fast. Every battle. Every decision. Every breakneck bolt out of disaster, every life-saving or life-altering choice that's made.

And later he will obsess over this choice like he does so many others. Maybe not out loud. Maybe he won't go to Katherine and ask what she would have done, ask what he should have done, or even -- perhaps more usefully -- what he can learn from this. Maybe he will talk to Sinclair and report this so she can record it, give it to her in the same cut-and-dry tone that she writes those reports in, and go no further in the discussion of it. Maybe he'll try to teach Asha... something. Maybe he will just hold it in his mind, wondering what other choices he could have made, following them to his logical conclusion. Maybe he'll let it go sooner rather than later. It's war, after all. Other things to do. Other concerns to attend to.

This is war.

Wyrmbreaker knocks Stormstrike off of the Theurge, who is rapidly reverting to his birth form, becoming the tall, fair young man Lukas met him as. His eyes are blank, his skin drained of blood, his throat and part of his chest torn open. Stormstrike catches herself on her feet rather easily, snarling, her head low and her fur bristled.

The Blackwings, the rest of them, are in shock. Threnody's hind legs are twitching but useless; Wane is trying to heal him while she quakes with the loss of one packmate, the near-loss of another. Sunthief is, eyes wide, staying out of the way of two angry Ahrouns. He's wiser than he acts.

"You are not my Judge," growls Stormstrike. "You --"

She pauses, head cocked, and one ear twitches. Her guard does not go down, her eyes pinned on Lukas still yet. Her lips curl back in a warning snarl, threatening him if he comes any closer.

No further words have the chance to make it out. Key of Heaven, bloody between them, sucks in a sudden breath that escapes through the hole in his body. Broken, savaged, he starts to get up to all fours, those blank eyes of his turning intelligent

and then shattering into fury as his boddy ripples instantly to crinos with a blood-splattering roar. He goes at Stormstrike.

[phanerothyme] Stormstrike
[+10 +10 (SotF)]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4

[phanerothyme] Key
[+8]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1

[Wyrmbreaker] Nothing -- not even time enough for amazement. Wyrmbreaker reacts again as he did underground, in that collapsing cavern: instantly, brutally, whipping around and lunging the same instant Key of Heaven does. The same instant Stormstrike does.

It's his spirit that burns, not his rage. He knows more than anything else at this moment, more than his own name, the pound of his heart, that time is essential. That having the first strike is essential.

[-1Gn to get an additional +10 on SotF! No rage this round! +10 +10 +10]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1

[Wyrmbreaker] [sorry, that should be +10 +10 +9 (crinos)]

[phanerothyme] Between Lukas and Stormstrike there is a frenzied, bloody Theurge going after his Alpha mindlessly -- just as she went after him with all her faculties intact. Or so one can hope. Key's back is to Lukas. His claws are towards his Alpha.

Lukas 30 (Showoff)
Stormstrike 24
Key 9

Key
1
R1
R2 -- NOM

Stormstrike
1a
1b -- held to defend vs. Lukas
R1
R2 -- bites on Key of Heaven

[Wyrmbreaker] 1a. wallop Key upside the head! - damage pulled to incapacitate
b. again if necessary; otherwise he'll change this to biting stormstrike
c. bite again!
d. bite again!
e. held to end of round!

Wyrmbreaker will also take hits for Key of Heaven.

[Wyrmbreaker] -5! dex+brawl, diff 6 for a punch.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Wyrmbreaker] [crinos str +3(succ)]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[phanerothyme] Key
[Soak]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] b. okay, seriously, GO DOWN.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 4) Re-rolls: 1

[Wyrmbreaker] [dam +3]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[phanerothyme] [same!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[phanerothyme] An enormous fist pounds Key in the back of the head. The Theurge, rather shockingly, shakes it off without even seeming to feel it. He lurches forward and another punch comes at him. This time it drops him flat, unconscious but not dead, not killed again. Stormstrike flashes her dark eyes at Wyrmbreaker.

[Wyrmbreaker] [changing 1c/1d to held actions as well!]

-- and Wyrmbreaker stops, one blackfurred fist clenched, standing over the unconscious Theurge. He pants out: white steam in the night. Every muscle in his body is sharply defined, tensed to straining, ready.

"Will you speak now?"
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2

[phanerothyme] Stormstrike might. She is not going to attack Lukas, but then, the only time she seemed ready to was when he was trying to stop her. She growls, and the voice that cuts through the night is not hers. It's in the High Tongue, more graceful than anything said in homid by the speaker.

"You will both be silent."

It's Wane, walking on all fours in crinos over to Key's side and looking at him. She doesn't heal him. She does put her handpaw on the side of his ribcage, feeling him breathe, and then looks over at Stormstrike with those opposite eyes of hers. "You heard our brother. This male was challenged to find and return you to the sept, or avenge your death. No more. The elders did not demand that he seek out your truth."

Wane implies, with the words, that Stormstrike does not owe Lukas a thing -- not the truth, at least. Not the reason for all this. And hearing those words, Stormstrike instead lowers her fur and her head. She is silent for a moment, then lifts her head and looks at him again.

"My Fiann told me how you aided them." There's a pause. "Return to the sept with my pack ...and the oathbreaker," she adds, casting a scornful glance at Key's body that is tinged with something else altogether, then looks back to Lukas. "You will hear my confession with everyone else."

She looks to Eyes that Wax and Wane. "Leave him be until we return. He will heal on his own."

[Wyrmbreaker] A frisson of rage ripples through Wyrmbreaker, deep and black. He bares his teeth at the Philodox, snaps at her ear as she bends to her felled brother. When his eyes swing back to Stormstrike, they're dark with fury.

"The elders demanded that much of me, no more."

That's a sort of assent, low and rumbling. A beat passes. But then Wyrmbreaker's chest rises again, an inhale.

"But as far as I'm concerned I failed the elders' challenge when I failed to keep you from killing your own packmate. Now I'm in this for my own reasons, and I demand more than what the elders demanded. I've done my utmost to reunite this pack with its rightful Alpha. Every step of the way I've been kept in the dark, told half-lies, kept from the truth, followed only so long as my interests coincided with whatever interests run beneath the surface in this pack. Adren or Fostern or Cliath or cub, I am through being anyone's mindless fist.

"I want the truth. Here and now."

[phanerothyme] Stormstrike watches him a moment, as close to calm as she's been since he 'met' her. And then the Blackwings rise to their feet -- all but the felled one, the bloodied Theurge -- and gather together. Notably, Threnody and Sunthief go where Wane is, by Key of Heaven. It's the Fiann who lifts the Theurge to his shoulder and slings him over, and then they begin to walk away, back the way they initially came.

Stormstrike makes no quip, no comment. She watches him as her packmates carry Key of Heaven, and when they are past her -- when she is between them and Wyrmbreaker -- the Fostern turns and follows them away.

[Wyrmbreaker] Every last bit of solid ground, solid truth, seems to have eroded away now. It leaves him adrift in a sea of questions: who, what, where, why. How and when. What, what, what the hell is going on here.

The pack gathers Key of Heaven up. Wyrmbreaker's lips lift as Threnody lifts the Theurge to his shoulder, but he doesn't move to stop him. Yet. He watches Stormstrike steadily, intently, waiting for some hint that she might speak now. Give him some reassurance of her intents, of her nature, anything at all.

It doesn't come. She turns to go. Wyrmbreaker's handclaws flex at his sides, closing and opening again, slowly. He speaks, low, taut with tension:

"You know I can't just let you go. I can't trust you without answers. I can't trust your packmates. I can't let you walk away.

"One more step and I will attack you."

[entheogen] It isn't as though Stormstrike has behaved without the pride typically associated with their tribe, or with their auspice. She has. But there have been other things, too: that she would not attack Key of Heaven in that brief pocket where she could have. And perhaps Lukas chalks that up to some primal knowledge that she would die there if she did, that he was on her heels and would attack her if she did. That she would bury them all underground if she did. That even if she could claw herself out, Threnody and Wane and Sunthief would be crushed in the tunnel behind her.

That she held back, when she cocked her head and listened to the voices of her packmates in her mind, telling her -- Gaia only knows what they told her.

That she stopped, finally, trying to kill Key of Heaven.

That, when Threnody was caught underground, getting him out trumped killing Key instantly -- but that she still could not let him up, let him get away.

But Lukas doesn't know her. He doesn't know this pack. They've kept him outside even with their truths, and like a true pack following the earthbound shadow of Crow flying overhead, even their truths have been veiled.


Stormstrike, hearing that thread, stops and turns. Her metis and her Galliard are in hispo, the latter carrying his half-dead Beta. Sunthief is in lupus, and all of them are so very dark, except: Wane's fur is mottled with gray, proof of ill breeding. And Threnody's fur is a deep, rusty red, mistaken for black as long as the moon doesn't touch him. There is, when the moon does touch him, a swirling band of worked copper around each bicep, bands either not there in homid or hidden by his clothes.

She is silent for a time. Maybe listening. Maybe considering. But it isn't Stormstrike who speaks. It's Threnody, his intonation of the High Tongue almost -- not quite -- as good as Wane's.

"You do not trust us?"

[Wyrmbreaker] "How can I?" Wyrmbreaker replies. His eyes flick to Threnody, but his tension hasn't abated, not an iota. A beat later they go back to Stormstrike; he addresses her directly. "You've been in the ground a week. You've barely shown sense until a moment ago. You're not dead. You attack your own beta. You'd rather let him die than let him run. Either he's the oathbreaker you name him, or you're turned. There is no way for me to tell which.

"As for the rest of you -- " his eyes flash across the pack, stop on Threnody, " -- you're tainted by association. You follow her. And since I can't trust her, I can't trust you."

A beat, long enough for the thick fur over his torso to stir, for those massive lungs to expand and empty again. Long enough for his eyes to rest on every face, search every face.

"Tell me what's going on. I don't want to fight. But I will if I have to."

[entheogen] The three younger Blackwings who have spent the night with Wyrmbreaker are watching him, two warformed Garou and one lithe, dark wolf with bright eyes. How can I? he says, and there's a faint clench of tension. It increases when he tells them they're tainted by association by following Stormstrike as soon as they found her.

Again he threatens violence, and the twist of ill will in the air between the Blackwings and Wyrmbreaker tightens, curling faster into a knot.

"We followed you," Threnody is saying, the closest to his rage, the closest to his heart. "We obeyed you. We trusted you, even when you took our sister aside because you did not trust us. You never trusted us. Did you truly even try?"

He's biting the words out of the air, incensed. Stung, it seems. Furious, as well. His grip on Key is iron. His nostrils flare as he stares at the Ahroun across the way from him.

Stormstrike is speaking, though, over the end of his words.

"Stop."

And, without question, Threnody stops. Stormstrike, called Starfall as a Fostern and by the Galliard who gave the name to her, shifts from hispo into homid. Now she looks like someone who has been underground for the better part of a week, but even then the strength and quality of her breeding glares through. Her skin is pale, her eyes sunken, her jaw squared. Jet hair falls thick to her shoulders, hair that Lukas has no way of knowing is usually scraped back into a severe knot or braid, leaving a black widow's peak above her brow. Her eyes are, as in homid, both shadowcolored and implacable as they ever were at near-frenzy.

She is a fucking mess. Her dedicated clothing is tattered and filthy, her skin rubbed with dirt, stuck under her fingernails. There is blood on her jaw and throat. Her Beta's blood, drying on her skin now.

"Do not," she says flatly, "call my pack tainted for their loyalty. Do not call them tainted," as though the word itself sets her teeth on edge. And it does. She has to work not to bare them, not to invite him to the fight he claims not to want, not to dare him to go ahead, come at me. "You want to know what's going on?"

And she might tell him, though she spits the words out, but Sunthief makes a low, whuffling noise that -- all the same -- translates clearly. Submissively. But given the way both Threnody and Wane's tension and anger with Wyrmbreaker falters when they hear it, he is not the only one thinking: "We all do."

Stormstrike looks like someone who just reached the bottom of a staircase they thought would keep going, her steps jarred suddenly. She recovers quickly, brushing that under the dark rug afforded by Crow's silky, secret-keeping wings. She looks at Threnody, as though expecting something from him, but he doesn't say a word. He looks at her, waiting. Some emotion tightens its hold on Stormstrike, and she looks back to Wyrmbreaker.

"Key of Heaven is an oathbreaker," she says flatly. Her voice is tight, the words forced out more than given: "But so am I. The unfortunates you slew underground... never set a fang to the flesh of humans."

Quieter, then, even as revulsion ripples through her pack, coming back at her twofold through their minds as well as their eyes, their body language, the way they pull back from her ever so slightly: "Key and I did."

[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker has only one answer for Threnody, as savage as the Fiann's questions --

"Yes."

His jaws snap at the air, bite the word out of the night. Before there's more, Stormstrike speaks. And speaks. When she's finished, the silence hangs thick for a moment. Then Wyrmbreaker:

"Tell me the rest."

[entheogen] "Back off of my packmates," Stormstrike snaps at him. That pack, her pack, is pulling back from her, recoiling from what she's saying. "They did their best with two leaders lying to them for months and betraying them for the past week. You are not here to judge us. Not even me. There are others who have far more right to hold me accountable long before you get your turn!"

Her teeth are on edge, half-bared now, her eyes filling with lightning. She's barely touched the well of her rage. And it keeps filling her. Has been filling her for a week now, with every thought of Key, with every voice of her packmates in her mind that she dared not answer.

Now her words just snap at the air, a flat recitation. Every other synonym is laced, without any attempt at subtlety, with a fuck you.

"Key and I started eating the flesh of humans. I wanted to confess. He didn't. The skeletons were his summoning. They had some control over the earth -- I never understood them, and they could not speak to me. But they understood strength, and I found them just as easy to bend to my will as Key had.

"I think he meant them to kill me. I don't know what else he was thinking." It's easy enough to tell: she hardly cares. She would be fine with never knowing, if she could eat his heart.

Sunthief, of all of them, loses it. Snaps to hispo, roaring at her. "Looked for you! Called! Why no answer! Why!"

Stormstrike, only angered by Wyrmbreaker's questions, by his anger, by his demands, reacts far differently when her packmates give her twice that. She closes her eyes a moment. "To lure him," she says, and opens them.

This is not, evidently, a good answer to the rest of the Blackwings. She's already tyring to explain: "He wasn't going to run as long as he could sense that I was alive; it would look too suspicious," she insists. "He obviously couldn't sneak off and kill me himself. If I spoke to you through Crow to tell you, he might have --"

"You BITCH!" That's Threnody, and that's Threnody snarling a single human word with a throat never meant for such sounds.

[Wyrmbreaker] He doesn't get in the middle of the crossfire now. Wyrmbreaker stands still, ears up and alert, eyes flicking between the packmates -- but he listens. He doesn't speak. He listens to the words, and he listens to the tone, the frustration and the anger and the sense of betrayal that underlies it all.

Bitch, Threnody spits at his Alpha. Wyrmbreaker's ears flatten at the very sound of it, then come slowly forward again. He has only one question after all this, one question he gives voice to now, slowly -

"You called him Oathbreaker. What oath did he make you, that he broke?"

[entheogen] Stormstrike just huffs, shaking her head. Even at this. Even with Threnody all but making her flinch, even at her most shamed, she has disdain for him. Anger. "What else would you call someone like him?"

She shakes her head. "Are you happy? Done now? I was hoping for maybe a last hour or so with my packmates before going before the elders and going through all of this again. But I wouldn't want to head back that way with you snarling at my back again."

[Wyrmbreaker] [percep+subt for all that stuff! +WP cuz HE REALLY CARE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 [WP]

[entheogen] [She's telling the truth.]

[entheogen] [AS FAR AS HE CAN TELL DUN DUN DUNNN]

[Wyrmbreaker] And again a silence, hanging like a mist. If any speak now, it won't be Lukas. He doesn't speak until he's had a good long time to look at Stormstrike, to study her, to weigh her words against some feather of truth in his own heart. Finally -- and strangely gently -- he speaks.

"No. I'm not happy. But at least I understand a little better now."

A pause; a final easing of his tension, a moment in which he lifts a clawed hand to his brow, pinches his eyesockets as though he were in another form altogether. When he looks at Stormstrike again, he is firm. Calm now. Steady.

"You are strong, Stormstrike, Starfall. But you are proud as well. You are too proud, and you are not so strong as you think. Not strong enough to keep such secrets from your pack. Not strong enough not need your pack at all. No Alpha is that strong.

"I don't have much right to judge you, this is true. I don't know why you ate human flesh, and in all honesty I don't care. I was not your mentor, and I am not your tribe alpha, and I am not a Philodox. I am not even your Septmate. But I am your tribesman, and I am an Alpha in my own right. I care about the relationship you have with your pack, because in that and that alone, we are not so different.

"Listen to me. Consider this counsel, not accusation, and not judgment. This pack trusted you. It trusted in you as it never trusted in Key of Heaven, or in me. I know, because I saw."

His eyes shift briefly to Threnody. "You asked me earlier if I ever tried to trust you. I did. When I was given alphaship over your pack, I tried very hard to trust you, to become your Alpha, if only for a while.

"But I was never your Alpha. Not the way Stormstrike is your Alpha, and not even the way Key of Heaven was your Beta. You followed me and you obeyed me, but it was the deference of Cliaths to a Fostern. This pack never ... let me in. Your bond was your own. Your secrets were your own. Your ways and your tactics and your interactions were your own, and I tried to believe that that was simply your way. A pack less close-knit than my own, that held higher walls. But then I saw you with your rightful Alpha, and I knew that was never the case.

"I was never your Alpha," he repeats, firmer this time. "I don't resent that. I don't suspect fouler deeds beneath the surface now; it's always been simpler than that. You had your Alpha, and it was always Stormstrike-yuf.

"That is the truth, Stormstrike." He faces his auspicemate again. "But the bitter truth is also this: you never trusted them the way they trusted you. Not enough to tell them what had happened. Not enough to trust them to help. I don't pretend to know your reasons. Maybe you just wanted to protect them. But in the end, the relationship between Alpha and pack is a two-way street. One does not stand apart from the other.

"So that last peaceful hour you wanted would have been based on a lie, Stormstrike. And when it was over your packmates would have added that to your litany of guilt. Remembered it as one more betrayal."

A pause. He takes a step closer to Stormstrike, and now he's speaking directly to her, right to her, the whole of his attention narrowed down to this one singular focus.

"You can go. I won't try to stop you. You can have that hour with your packmates, but I suggest that in that hour you act like the Alpha you should have been. No more lies. No more silence. Tell them what happened. Tell them why, and tell them it wasn't their fault, because they'll doubt that in the coming weeks and months. Tell them everything -- because they deserve to know, and because it's your duty as Alpha to prepare them and protect them to the best of your ability.

"Tell them how to go on without you if our Elders should call for your death. Leave them with something, some concrete directive or testament, that they can hold on to."

Another silence, more troubled than the last.

"For what it's worth," he adds, quieter, "I believe you did what you felt was best for your pack. I believe your intentions were honorable."