The Grand Elder is dead. All but one of the Guardians too. The Warder is dying, roaring defiance as the twisted ones drive him into the Maelstrom. The ground is red at his feet. His Septmates are being slaughtered.
There was no warning. No one saw it coming. No one ever expects a Caern to be attacked, but least of all during a moot when all the Garou of the Sept are gathered. The timing alone is a sort of mockery, a sort of humiliation: that the twisted ones would attack now, at the height of the Gaians' power,
and win.
Thirty minutes ago, it was a glorious August night. Hot and humid, and opening howls had just rung out across the Umbrascape. The Garou of Maelstrom were bold in their numbers, secure in their multitude. They were many. They had gathered to pay homage to the spirits; to debate and haggle and fight; to run their rage out into the Hunt and, by doing so, recharge the Caern.
The sky was being opened. All the totems of the Sept were invoked in turn, leaping out of thin air to stand before their packs, bursting out of the earth to attend to Maelstrom. When the Mistress of the Rite turned to the Caern Totem, last and greatest of the totems, the unthinkable happened.
Maelstrom turned black. Burst into a shower of scalding toxin that ate through whatever it touched. That's how Sees the Umbral Sun died: badly, screaming, her flesh melting from her bone. No one had time to notice, though, because it wasn't Maelstrom after all spitting poison into the air -- it was the bloated, rippling monstrosity that rose from its depths, devouring as it went.
The Garou of Maelstrom have killed Thunderwyrms before. None like this one, though. It's as big as a 747. It heaves out of the earth, scattering toxin and muck. When it slams down, the earth cracks open ten feet deep. Garou slide screaming into the depths. Dancers are pouring out, tainted blades swinging, teeth snapping. The Warder was bellowing orders, the Guardians were scrambling, the Garou were taking up weapons and changing form and forming up behind Evens the Odds and
one of the young ones, a Cliath, with more heart than good sense, was dragged into the fissure. They could hear her shrieking, but only for a while. Then the Dancers tore her apart.
They could hear Wyrmbreaker snarling to his pack: Stay with me! SINCLAIR, ON YOUR LEFT -- hold together! Stay together! They could hear violence and bloodshed everywhere, and there's silver on Wyrmbreaker's claws and blood on Sinclair's face, they're tearing into the Wyrm as the Wyrm pours from the ground. For a little while it seemed like they might win. They're so fast, so deadly, so strong; they tear through the cursed ones as they crawl out of their pit, throw them ragged and mangled back atop their brothers still clambering out after them. But there's so many of them, and all around them the Gaians are dying --
Height of Mountains, impaled on a jagged stake that, at second glance, turns out to be the mutated arm of some laughing, slavering Dancer; impaled and still alive, reaching out with his claws to snatch the Dancer's face off his skull in one vicious strike, they fall together, Height's chest shudders through a last gasp or two and then he's just a boy, too young to die like that
-- and growing fewer and fewer. They're pushed back step by step. They put their backs to the totem, but it's not much of a totem now, scattered and rent asunder, an awful hollow sucking-gurgling rising from Maelstrom's pit, like a drain running dry. Still the Dancers are coming. There's got to be a hundred of them at least, and they can feel Wyrmbreaker's fury and frustration and self-castigation in their minds:
where did they come from? how did i not know? how - MADDOX, DOWN -
a jet of toxin spewing over their heads, the Thunderwyrm rearing to strike again. Out of the way! someone cries. It's absolute chaos. Their adrenaline sears every instant into a crystalline impression carved into the mind:
The bloody bodies rent and torn, staining the lake. Their dead, dragged into the pit to be devoured or defiled. The Spirals cackling like hyenas, pouring from the fissure like blood from a wound. The Thunderwyrm pale and turgid, an obscenity that never should have seen the light of the moon, its ring-toothed mouth gaping.
At the foot of the Wyrmpole the Grand Elder faces an enormous Crinos Dancer, fur white as snow, dripping with black gore, emblazoned with fell glyphs that pulse and glow. Balance Without Fault has no chance against this monstrosity, and he knows it. He is a statesman, not a warrior. The beast who has come for him, who spotted him across the killing-field and waded his way through the chaos to get to him, is every inch the slaughterer. The beast has torn Balance's remaining packmate apart, slain the one Guardian who tried to defend him. It was effortless. The beast has driven him step by step to this place, blocking every strike, sealing every escape. Balance Without Fault bleeds from half a hundred minor wounds, none of them fatal, none of them intended to be. It has been a deliberate, patient, cruel herding, and now, at the foot of the Wyrmpole where so many Wyrmlings have been hung in the past, Balance understands the reason, the choice, the symbolism.
Balance Without Fault faces him anyway. He keeps his courage, but his end is not dignified; it is slow, and messy, and hard to watch.
They were half a Caern away, the Unbroken. They were fighting with their backs to Maelstrom, pinned between a wall of Dancers and the scattered, shattered Totem. They could watch, but they could not aid their Elder. They had a dying Caern totem to defend - a totem that, even now, they dare not touch.
And now the Grand Elder is dead. All but one of the Guardians too. The Warder is dying, roaring defiance as the twisted ones drive him into the Maelstrom.
The end is very close.
Brutal RevelationThe call came and she was already in bed with Alex. The window was open, letting in the summer night air. There are cicadas outside, and crickets. They can can hear the distant swell and crush of the Pacific as it laps at the shore. Sinclair sleeps half on her stomach, one leg and one arm draped over Alex, their bodies actually more than an inch part tonight because it's so blasted hot. But his hand rests on his chest, just over her hand. His head is turned to the side, his breath ruffling her hair gently on each exhale. There's very little that could wake her from this kind of comfort, elemental and deep as it is. There are very few thing that could pull her from Alex, on this night or any other.
Lukas's voice roaring black and cold through her mind in summons is one of those things.
Her eyes snap open, but in seconds she realizes Lukas has called for her more than once. All ofher packmates' thoughts are loud in her mind, caught halfway through their communications, their who-is-wheres. It was only when every last one of them all but screamed across the totem link and Perun himself cracked like thunder that she woke, and her heart is pounding already. I'm coming I'm coming I'm coming she says, or says without words, howling back to them that she hears, she's coming, she understands.
"Alex. Alex wake up," she says urgently, holding his shoulder and stirring him. She doesn't let him get up but she holds him in bed, her lips by his ear, and she tells him:
the caern is being attacked
and he knows somehow that it isn't the caern in San Diego, it's not the high-rise the Walkers are ensconced in, it's Maelstrom, it's her true home, her pack's home. She tells him:
I have to go
and he knows she means now, and he knows the rest, all the what-ifs, knows she might not come back. She doesn't lie to him. She never lies to him. The rest of what is said and done happens very quickly, and privately. She yanks on the clothes she wore that day, which happen to be a pair of cutoffs and a red tank top, and she makes a phone call on the land line. She looks at Alex, and turns to flickering blue and white electricity.
The receiver drops with a thunk! to the ground. Two time zones over, a golden-skinned, wild-haired predator appears in a bolt of energy, her eyes already darker with rage.
Talens are shared amongst the Unbroken. Ones that guard, ones that heal. Sinclair has been attending moots in San Diego, had come back from one there after what passes for a revel among those Walkers. She knew the one in Chicago would only be beginning when she went to sleep. It gave her comfort; she missed her pack. She touched their minds as they were en route, said goodnight, good moon, and dropped out of consciousness. And then the sky in Chicago was opened, and Maelstrom turned black, and Lukas and the Unbroken began screaming for her. Sinclair called the Loft, Sinclair stepped sideways, Sinclair ran to the caern, praying, praying, holding the minds of her packmates tight and close as though as long as she did they would not die before she got there.
The first thing she hears when she enters the fray is SINCLAIR, ON YOUR LEFT-- and this saves her life. This unleashes, too, the rage she feels at the attack, the rage and pain she feels at leaving her mate like that, the rage at what she sees, and she tears out something's throat and is already turning to take something else, her back to her pack, her fur nearly brushing them as she comes back, back, returning to them after every lunge forward into the fray.
STOP IT she roars at Wyrmbreaker in the middle of his self-flagellation, just STOP, no lecture, no time, no nothing but Sinclair darting forward and ripping off the leg of a dancer who, in turn, leaves three jagged gashes across her left shoulder, part of her chest. She howls, but it's a sound of anger more than pain, she doesn't feel pain, she doesn't feel fear, she feels only that flashing, pulsing rage, she thinks
I'm getting married on a beach and my family will be there. I'm getting married on a goddamn beach.
It's mad, mad thinking, but it makes her so angry, and it fuels her, it stands as an icon, a banner as bright to her as any, because in this icon her pack is with her, and her family, and they are all living. They are smiling. In this banner, they survive. And nothing will take that from her. Nothing will stop her. She is going back to her mate.
Sinclair watches Balance Without Fault die. She watches because she is a Galliard, and because she is facing a Dancer whose back is to the Wyrmpole. She can see it. She hears it when the stoicism turns to screams, and when the screams turn to gurgles, and when his body collapses. The Dancer before her dies, but she's too far away to kill him and get to the Wyrmpole anyway. She won't and can't leave her pack, not even for the Grand Elder, not for anything. But seeing that death, seeing how it happens, is the first time her courage begins to falter. The first time her rage feels a cold wet trickle of fear run down its back.
You have to decide, she says then, her voice far too dark, far too cold in Lukas's mind. He knows it's meant for him. He knew before she reached out to him that it was meant for him, and down to him now. elder dead. Warder and Guardians dead. So very, very many dead. And she doesn't say this after long deliberation, and she doesn't say this out of terror. She says this because it's the truth, and Sarita's not here, and because someone needs to.
There are enough of us left we could survive a retreat.
She says this because it is the truth. It is the hard, ugly, brutal truth that she knows no one else's honor and pride will let them say.
Sidewalk's EndWhen chaos breaks loose over the moot, the warriors rush to meet waves of enemies pouring from Maelstrom. It's what they do. Bite and rend and tear and destroy and die. That is the life of Garou. Most of them, anyway.
While Lukas and Sinclair leap into the fray, Maddox more than stays behind, he runs. Not away, he's not a coward looking for a nook to hide in. The Fiann is not a warrior, but he's not a coward, either. Shifting into his considerably less destructable Crinos form as he goes, he heads for the storm clouds. Dancers are streaming in, Maelstrom is receding, his septmates are dying all around him, but still when Maddox reaches his pack's totem spirit, he smirks. As much as a Garou can smirk with the face of a monstrous wolf, a flash of white teeth against reddish, brownish fur.
There's no time for flair, for some grandiose display of respect or an offering of chiminage. He doesn't remind the mighty thunder god of that one time he let him eat half his pizza from that one place that was like, holy shit, mate, amazing, or the times he played for the spirits on the umbral roof of the loft. Maddox drops to his knees before Perun, and he pours his Gnosis into that black storm, and he begs for help.
Thunder rumbles and cracks across the sea of chaos, the war, the battle and the blood. Where the cloud formed and rippled in the air stands a larger than life brute. With one mighty swing of his axe, three Spirals suddenly find themselves without torsos.
It's only then that Maddox stops to really consider his own safety. He reaches for his hip, for the place where the pockets of his ripped and faded jeans would be, and he retrieves a clay jar. Crushing it between his clawed fingers, he smears blue liquid where he he can. Down his muzzle, on his arms, across his chest. He moves fast, keeping close but not too close to Perun, ducking the axe when the totem brings it back. In a blink, he activates the liquid. It's messy smears on his fur glow briefly blue, and then the Spirals moving toward the slight werewolf pause. They feel a chill when they look at the Fiann. It seeps into their bones; they'll never be warm again. If they touch him it'll be worse, right? It won't stop them all, but it'll give Maddox time.
Time to summon something else. This time he calls a healer to his side. Because he's not one, you see. He doesn't have a gift for it, or even a rite to cleanse. Where the Sidewalk Ends doesn't need those things, he thinks. Not when he can do his job and talk to the spirits, bartering for their aid with his own considerable spiritual energy. A gaunt old man appears, a scythe as tall as he is and just a hair thinner in hand. The Harvester reaps enemies, sowing a field of blood when they get too close, and he heals those that he can reach.
He's on his way back to his pack, spirit at his heels, to fight with what paltry strength he has beside his brother and his sisters, his family, to die with them if he has to, though he'd prefer not. Sinclair, who brought her boyfriend 'round earlier this summer, getting the dumbest, dopiest, slyest smile from the Theurge any of the Unbroken had yet seen. Katherine, who puts up with having a ragamuffin musician cluttering up one of her guest rooms from time to time with more grace and charm than anyone should ever show Maddox. And Lukas. Lukas who has taught him a few choice Czech phrases in return for a few more Russian. Lukas, leader, brother, friend.
Lukas who is saving his life again, the smarmy bastard. MADDOX, DOWN and Maddox drops in time to see the grand elder fall. Behind them, Maelstrom is going going gone, but there's nothing he can do about that. Maddox has never been the heroic type, spitting in fate's eye and damning the consequences to do as much as possible with his short life and his meager strength. He does what he can. And what he can do now is see that Sinclair and Lukas and Kate are healed almost as quickly as they're injured. And he can keep himself from getting killed, too, if he's lucky.
Honor's CompassKatherine is going to die this way.
Blood-stained, her white fur more the color of other creatures than her own. She's going to die in a great deal of pain and screaming and her fucking royalty bleeding into the dirt. When she does die, she's going to do it with more dignity than anyone who knew her starting out might have expected and her name is going to be sung through the ages -- just as she wanted. There may be children, other Bellamontes but there won't be any future Katherine's.
She'd always imagined she'd have so much time.
Time to plan a future, time to meet the love of her life, time to know herself and her body before feeling it swell with new beginnings. She'll age, Honor's Compass and she will become every inch the warrior she wished herself in her heart of hearts, in her tiny, girlish fantasies to be, but she will die in battle. At least -- in one scope of future, she'll die this way.
But not here.
And not now.
Though she is bleeding. Her maw dripping with red saliva; teeth stained; eyes fierce and pale and determined. Her body glowing with the protection of Luna's gift; her claws sending great slivers of agony up her limbs with every. passing. second. She takes the arm off a Spiral; ravaging a Cliath, already dying on the ground. Just leaps on top of it and rips away bone and tissue and the diseased limb goes flying.
Swallowed by the black; the carnage; the death.
Because of course she would, this Silver Fang Philodox. She would just throw herself in; screaming before she's howling; snarling and pushing through her disgust at the horror, at the dirt and the toxicity and the sheer scale of this fight -- she would risk her life for a half-dead Cliath Bone Gnawer who probably sneered and scowled at her and called her a Silver Fang with that level of disdain only some Garou could muster for the once-Kings of their kind.
--
She takes claws along her spine; and arches back; howling in agony as flesh is ripped away.
--
When Balance Without Fault dies; she wants to keen but there isn't time and her mouth is full of Spiral before she has the second she needs to breath in her sorrow for him.
On and on and on, until her massive Hispo chest is heaving; and her body screaming; lanced with agony.
--
She's backed into a corner at last; and she won't back down. She won't she won't she won't.
I am a Silver Fang, she thinks, her mind clouded with pain; her muscles shaking with the effort to hold herself upright. I am Katherine Bellamonte. I will not surrender.
-coda-I will not surrender.
Lukas can't say if that thought comes from Katherine or if welled up in his own heart at the same instant - furious, infuriated, murderous.
I will NOT!
- and his rage is a black cloud, a storm as fierce as his totem. He roars, he lunges forward and something dies terribly. There's blood everywhere, a hot red spray of it, something shrieking, bones crunching. He's back and he's so angry, it can't end like this, this is his pack and his caern, his totem, his Sept. It wasn't supposed to be like this, and he'd flay himself all over again asking why, how, how did he not know, but it's anger in his mind right now, outrage. Outraged that someone could suggest retreat. Outraged that his own packmate could suggest such a cowardly thing, retreating, outraged that
she's right. God, she's right. The Grand Elder is dead. The totem is dying. The Warder is dying, and there's only a handful of Gaians left. They can die here like heroes, useless when the real end comes. Or --
Wyrmbreaker puts his claws into the earth, this ground he's defended so long, and his jaws stretch open and he -- roars, or howls, or screams. It's hair-raising. Agony and anger and hate, hatred of the enemy, hatred of the decision he's made. There are no words until the very end, the very last of his breath:
"RETREAT. THE CAERN IS LOST."
The words are bitter as wormwood on his tongue. He can hear the jeering of the Dancers, the ululating howls of mockery and triumph. He can see their dead, their wounded, the fear and shock in the eyes of the living.
"Stay together. Wounded in the middle. I'll be right behind you. Get out, go, go, go!"
They're moving now; Wyrmbreaker herding at their heels, snapping at them to press them toward the borders. Toward the lake. It's the only escape; the only place a Thunderwyrm won't go. There's a bare dozen left. The youngest of them is mad with fear; he runs heedlessly, and someone shouts wait! but it's too late. He separates from the group, veers to the left, and a pack of Dancers is on him. He doesn't have time to scream.
The rest run. Down from the seat of Maelstrom, helter-skelter across the barren Umbral landscape. Past the creaking ghosts of derelict ships. Wyrmbreaker, bringing up the rear, passes the Warder. Tries to pull him away, but Evens the Odds shakes him off with a growl. A fine red mist snorts from his nostrils with every breath.
"I'll hold them off. Go."
Wyrmbreaker hesitates just a second. His teeth bare; it's a helpless sort of rage. He goes.
Somehow, Sinclair finds herself in the lead. Perhaps she's the only one left who can fulfill the role -- all the other Ahrouns are dead. The lake is vast and black before her. The water's edge is stained with blood. There are bodies there, too -- those whose courage broke, those who ran, but not fast enough. If she can just reach the water, they might be safe. They'll at least have a better chance without that goddamn Thunderwyrm crushing them by the dozen. If she can just get there --
a hand locks around Sinclair's ankle. The grip is thin but tenacious, gripping with desperate strength. She can barely recognize the ragged figure that clings to her heel. It's Bleeding Heart, body broken, limbs shattered, her face a mask of blood. Her other hand is locked around something, a shard of graven bone, a dead man's grip that she relents only when Sinclair looks down.
"Listen to me," she whispers. "Listen."
Honor's CompassKatherine has to fight her way free to reach the others.
She manages it, barely, using the last of her strength to summon renewing determination with another gift; casting a sensation of purpose; of enduring strength to those few around her. Some feel it as they lay dying; moaning and it quiets them. Stills their cries for aid or their howls of rage. Others use it to pump their legs a little faster; to skid past the monstrous Thunderwyrm's tail rolling out and crushing bone to dust.
The Silver Fang -- abruptly now the surviving elder of her auspice; now the only -- streaks past her Alpha, her breath coming hard and fast. She is injured, Honor's Compass, for she was never quite the fighter that Sinclair; that Lukas were, but she is not done. Not dying. Her body is wracked with pain from the claws she'd turned into silver weapons and its with a whimper she cannot contain that she forces back the gift. Trembles at the lip of the lake and retches; her great sides heaving; ribs outlined beneath her fur.
A hand closes on her sister's ankle; and Katherine is thoughtless; angry and heartbroken and running on instinct as she snarls; raising a claw to cut away the grip before the haze clears in her eyes and she recognizes the bloodied figure on the ground.
Listen, the Theurge pleads in her reed-thin, dying whisper, listen to me.
Katherine waits.
Sidewalk's EndRetreat. Just a fancy word for "run away." Of course the Ahroun would rebel, particularly this one. Maddox wouldn't be surprised if all of them dug in to fight to the last. They've all been here so long, in this place with so much history for them. Maddox's history in Chicago is brief. It doesn't hold his heart and his loyalty the way it does his packmates.
Retreat is not a dirty word, he thinks, but doesn't say. Couldn't say, not in the heat of that roaring screaming howl. Who could get through that? But he knows, before it even ends, that Lukas will do what's right and not what's heroic or brave. He won't do what was born in him to do. Maddox knows, because he knows his alpha is not completely mental. If he was, Maddox wouldn't like him nearly so much, and he certainly wouldn't follow him.
When it ends, and Lukas orders that retreat, Maddox doesn't wait. He doesn't take the lead, nor does he hang around to bring up the rear. Let the braver Garou take the positions of protection, Maddox sticks to the middle. He sends the Harvester out among the few that remain to heal what can be healed before releasing the spirit from service. Perun remains close to Lukas, bringing up the rear, looking down at the dying Warder with flashing, lightning eyes. Maddox isn't fast enough to grab the Cliath that runs hurtling to his death. He watches him go, then turns his head away, ears flat back. He keeps his focus on what he can do, and what he can do is tend the wounded in whatever way he can, and try to keep the non-packmates together, and as safe as they can be in light of what just happened.
When they near the water's edge and that flash of filthy, blood-soaked white darts past, Maddox is right behind her. As Honor's Compass retches, she'll feel the cool healing tingle of a Gaia's breath broken over her back, and the handpaw of her younger brother.
Listen to me, he hears, but doesn't leave Katherine's side until he knows she's okay. He looks from the broken body of the ritemistress and up to Sinclair, and over to Lukas.
-coda-That Bleeding Heart is dying is painfully clear. It might be argued the Theurge has been dying for a very, very long time, but now it's imminent and unavoidable. Nothing, no amount of spiritual might or savvy, could possibly stave it off now. The knowledge is in her eyes. There's no fear there, only urgency.
Her hand reaches out, grasps Sinclair's fur, pulls the Galliard closer. Her eyes roll to Katherine. Maddox. Her voice is nothing but a rasp, nothing but a whisper, but they hear her anyway:
"This was always a possibility. We've prepared. Take this fetish. Take it. When you activate it, it will open a moonbridge ... not only through space, but time. It will take you back before the founding of the Caern, before the founding of the Hive.
"You'll have three days to change our fate. After that the fetish breaks. If you don't reopen the moonbridge before moonrise on the third day, you'll be trapped in the past."
A scattering of gravel. Wyrmbreaker is beside them, sides heaving, fur drenched with blood, hackles up. His eyes are wild, blue as flames. "Why aren't you running," he snarls, and then he sees Bleeding Heart. Silences.
They can hear the moans and screams of the dying behind them. They can see, at the top of the hill, the white-furred beast stamping his foot into what remains of Maelstrom, scattering it. They can see the dark, torn lump that used to be Evens the Odds, can see when the white-furred Dancer kicks him over the edge, can see his reverted homid body rolling lifelessly down the hill, mud and blood and the filth of battle smearing.
Then the white Spiral looks past the bottom of the hill, to the edge of the lake. His eyes lock on the small, ragged group of survivors. He's seen them, and with a terrible, patient deliberateness, he begins to follow.
"We need to go," Wyrmbreaker urges, low, tense.
"Go," Bleeding Heart echoes. Her hand opens. The fetish -- it seems so plain, so ordinary, just a shard of bone inscribed with glyphs -- rolls out of her palm. Falls to the ground. "Take it and go. Save us."
Brutal RevelationFor a moment, she hates him. Hates him and hates Katherine, too. Hates the honor and the pride of Lords and Fangs both. Thinks about unwinnable battles and Kin and others left behind to pick up pieces -- only they can't. Left behind to be picked off one by one, kidnapped and taken to Hives, made to breed until the world ends up covered in blood just as this caern is. For a moment, Sinclair hates all of them. The Guardians who failed, the Warder who damn well should die now, should have been the first, hates everyone around her, hates all the packmates who bonded with her, hates Alex, hates everything she has to live for because she's not going to get to live for any of it at all.
It's there, despairing finally, where before there was hardly any fear, hardly any despair or even pain. She begins to howl. It's an undulating, mourning, wailing sound across the battle, carried by the Wyld itself, and it's a hymn to all those things there are to live for. All those Kin. All those moonrises, all those sunsets. For the stories remembered and the things still yet to be seen, and for the children Katherine has not had, and the slow deaths of those left unprotected.
Twing with that dirge is the roaring of Ahrouns, the laughter of Spirals, the coursing rage of the Gaians as they fall, and falter, the clinging to hope or honor that says no, they can't abandon their caern, their totem, turn their backs on their enemy, they can't live with that. Sinclair uses her claws, and she thinks
I will die singing.
The sound of my voice will haunt you.
Sinclair rips off half the face of one of her enemies, takes his eye from him, and when he howls in rage and pain, she leaps on him and crushes his windpipe. Something hits her in the shoulder, knocking her off. A roar cuts through the sound of her wind getting knocked out of her, the beginning of that scream from Wyrmbreaker, the scream that ends in
loss.
They're moving now. Running. And she's howling again, singing again, not in mourning but a cry of gathering, summoning, an implicit promise, but of what she doesn't know. A lone Cliath darts off and is killed, and punctuates that new howl, underlines that promise, that warning. They leave Maelstrom behind, falling, failing. They leave it behind to die without them.
Sinclair has to leap over bodies. Some of them she doesn't quite manage not to land on. They walk on the dead. And were she not so fleet-footed and so sure of her steps, Sinclair would fall when Bleeding Heart grabs her ankle, all but yanks her back. She never knew the brittle Theurge was quite so strong, wheeling on her, maw open to bite the head off of the Spiral she expects to see. She pauses, and barks instantly for a healer, but Bleeding Heart says
Listen
and Sinclair's ears twitch, she looks around, and she lowers her muzzle towards the Theurge, listening. Maddox sends the Harvester their way, and they listen. Listen closely, because her strength is dying, and the Harvester cannot bring her back. Not this one.
Sinclair comes nearer, without being pulled. She laps at Bleeding Heart's wounds as though she cannot stop herself, tries to fix her, tries to do something. Give her one last corporal act of mercy, if nothing else. She hears the words and takes the fetish in her teeth, tugs it away from the Theurge's grip so that she can let go, so that she can save her strength for the words. Wyrmbreaker arrives and the bone is between Sinclair's jaws, Maddox and Kate beside her, beside Bleeding Heart.
We need to go, says Wyrmbreaker, seeing what the others have not forgotten, but are not looking at. The white thing, coming for them. Inexorably, ever too patiently. Sinclair growls, low in her throat, at his arrogance. At his daring, to defile their caern this way. To take it from them. She turns to Maddox, immediate, and passes the fetish to him, barks an order she has no right to give, and every right: "Now!
Sidewalk's EndThey gather around the dying Theurge. Maddox kneels beside her so that maybe the softspoken Garou won't feel the need to try and raise her voice to reach them.
Three days isn't a lot of time to save their sept. Crossing time and distance to do it is like something out of a sci-fi film, or something for the Galliards to sing about if they succeed. If they even find out. These things are always tricky in the movies. Bend an errant blade of grass, and Lake View might get built in Bronzeville, wouldn't that be surprising.
Sinclair drops the bone fetish into Maddox's paw, and for a moment he looks at it with wide dark eyes, looks at her. His startlement doesn't last long. Rising to his feet, he steps back and away from their cluster, but before he opens the gate, Maddox does something that would be expected of him if he'd been born just a few hours earlier, before the far edge of the moon showed the faintest sliver of silvery white that would declare him a spirit-talker.
He turns around to face the white Spiral, lumbering toward them slowly. Haughtily. Maybe it's too far off to see the expression on the Fianna's face, the lift of his eyes and the curl of his lip, or maybe he is. He could be a hundred miles off, or a few few hundred feet, it wouldn't stop Maddox smirking in his direction. Smug. You're not gettin' these ones, mate. Taunting. Not today.
"Now!"
Mad Maddox twists his arm back and opens a moon bridge.
Sidewalk's EndThey gather around the dying Theurge. Maddox kneels beside her so that maybe the softspoken Garou won't feel the need to try and raise her voice to reach them.
Three days isn't a lot of time to save their sept. Crossing time and distance to do it is like something out of a sci-fi film, or something for the Galliards to sing about if they succeed. If they even find out. These things are always tricky in the movies. Bend an errant blade of grass, and Lake View might get built in Bronzeville, wouldn't that be surprising.
Sinclair drops the bone fetish into Maddox's paw, and for a moment he looks at it with wide dark eyes, looks at her. His startlement doesn't last long. Rising to his feet, he steps back and away from their cluster, but before he opens the gate, Maddox does something that would be expected of him if he'd been born just a few hours earlier, before the far edge of the moon showed the faintest sliver of silvery white that would declare him a spirit-talker.
He turns around to face the white Spiral, lumbering toward them slowly. Haughtily. Maybe it's too far off to see the expression on the Fianna's face, the lift of his eyes and the curl of his lip, or maybe he is. He could be a hundred miles off, or a few few hundred feet, it wouldn't stop Maddox smirking in his direction. Smug. You're not gettin' these ones, mate. Taunting. Not today.
"Now!"
Mad Maddox twists his arm back and opens a moon bridge.
Brutal RevelationBrutal Revelationwhat about now?
-coda-Maybe it's that smirk. Maybe it's the sudden, renewed sense of hope, or at least purpose, in the Gaians as they rise from where they've gathered around their dying Mistress of the Rite. There's so few of them left, but they aren't running anymore. They gather, and Maddox takes the fetish that Sinclair has in her teeth; Wyrmbreaker steps forward to bar the path to his packmates; Honor's Compass spreads her handpaws and joins her packmates with her touch.
Maybe it's all of that. Or maybe the white Spiral simply senses with the base, raw instinct of a feral thing, a cunning but artless monster, that his prey is escaping.
He drops to all fours. He's running suddenly, tearing down the hill toward them -- another Spiral gets in his way, yipping in excitement, we won, we won, we took the Caern and the white monstrosity gives a short snarl of impatience, he doesn't even stop, he tears his hapless ally's throat out and keeps on coming. Red in his mouth. Fresh red blood all over him, stark against the white. He'll be upon them in seconds,
but that's seconds too long.
Maddox twists his arm back. His Gnosis burns. The air superheats, incandesces, splits apart. White light casts the ruin and devastation into stark, monochromatic relief -- throws the shadows of torn flesh and cracked bones onto hard-packed ground, throws the shadow of the packmates long and black across the narrow, rocky beach.
The moonbridge is too bright to look at. Wyrmbreaker is herding his packmates into the aperture, shouldering them in, every strand of his black fur white-limned by the glow. The path rises to meet them. They can't see anything ahead of them, can't see where they're going, can't see where this portal, this time-bridge, leads.
They can see the white Spiral, though. They can see him flinching from the light, snarling as he turns his face away. He doesn't stop, though. He keeps coming, running, shrinking to his smallest and fastest wolf-form, claws gouging the earth for traction. He's twenty feet away. Ten. He's leaping for the portal, his eyes narrowed to murderous slits, but Bleeding Heart is calling on some strength none of them even knew she had to reach out with her thin, frail hands. She catches the Spiral by the hindpaw, yanks him back. He snarls in outrage. She holds fast, teeth bared, feral. He tears her throat out, and it's almost an afterthought because then he's turning back to the portal again.
She only delayed him by a second. It's enough. When he scrabbles through, the portal is almost closed. The timebridge is moving already -- they're moving, and the white Dancer is falling far, far behind as they accelerate to mindbending speeds. Soon they can't see their pursuer anymore. They hear him howling, furious that his quarry is slipping through his claws, and then even that falls away from them.
They can't see anything at all but a white brilliance so bright they have to close their eyes. They have to squeeze their eyes shut, and hold on to each other, their fur whipped straight back from their bodies, their skin and flesh distorting from their sheer velocity. Someone's screaming, or maybe it's all of them, or maybe it's simply the noise in here, inhuman and alien, whipping down the corridors of time, back and back and back and
stopping.
The deceleration hits like a fist in the gut. They're moving, and then they're at a dead stop. Their bodies ache. Their joints feel dislocated. Wyrmbreaker drops heavily to all fours, disoriented, and he realizes he has hands. He's in homid form again. They all are. And it's so dark here after the blinding light of the timebridge that their eyes can't see anything for moments on end. Gradually, their eyes adjust. Details emerge.
The moon, first. It looks like the same moon they left behind, round and full, risen a third of the way into the sky. And then the lake beneath it, reflecting moonlight in a long, silvery trail. After all that motion, they are where they began.
Where. Not when.
Wyrmbreaker pushes himself heavily up. He's breathing hard, almost gasping. He turns and he looks west over the city, only there's no city there. He can see the river, narrower than he remembers. He can see the shape of the land, which is the same, but all the skyscrapers are gone. All the roads, the bridges, the lights, the infrastructure.
All that remains are a handful of houses scattered on the prairielands, the closest a stone's throw away. About half a mile west, a few dozen are clustered around a crude dirt road running parallel to the lakeshore. Main Street, one supposes. There are lights burning in a few windows. One of the buildings is a public house, or a tavern, or something of the sort -- smoke rises from the chimney, and they can hear faint music drifting out into the night.
They can hear music, half a mile away. That's how quiet it is here. There's no rush of cars on the road, no hum of machinery in the air. In this world, such things have barely just come into existence.
