epilogue.

Danicka

Even now, they struggle through so much to be together. In the beginning it was his pack, her reticence, his threats, her lies. Every step they took towards something deeper, something that would last them the rest of their lives, they took in the knowledge that he would not be able to live with her or their cubs, that she would outlive him, that he could very well die long before either of them would be ready to let go. Three years later and they are married. They share a den, at least as often as they can. They are trying to get started on those cubs. His pack has changed. Her committment is total. His heart breaks if he so much as bruises her feelings with a poorly-chosen set of words. She tells him the truth even if it scares her, even if it hurts. But they still struggle.

Yet there's this: when they struggle, they do not push each other way. They circle each other at most, wary of causing harm, and then -- like now -- they hold each other as though staunching a wound. Tight. Uncompromising. Vital.

He wasn't okay. He thought he never would be. Danicka's arm encircles his chest completely then, holding him closer. A moment later he's saying that this is exactly what she did, and it helped him open his eyes. Upon mention of Red and Silver appearing before them, Danicka sees them flash into her mind's eye, as brilliant as though they had never died, hundreds of years apart from each other. She exhales, shakily.

Her mate is still not okay, and a part of her wants to keen softly. The noise is animal, and it sticks in her throat a bit. She doesn't entirely understand it. Instead, she strokes his side, and turns her face to kiss his chest. He will think. He will coalesce again. He'll tell her what happened tonight,

and another night, centuries ago. And he will be okay. He will.

She takes it as a promise, for that is what it is.

Later on they rise, and in this grand, luxurious hotel shower of theirs, they rinse the last of this night from their skins, at least. Danicka rests her head on his chest; Lukas folds his arms heavy around her, his large hands touching her back. She wrings the water from her hair while he wraps a towel around her shoulders, still remembering how she shivered in the rain, even though now her skin is pink from warmth. It is hard to let go of things that ache, that frighten, that grieve. Sometimes they linger for an entire lifetime. Sometimes they linger for many.

Their bed is larger than it needs to be. Many beds are. Tonight she sleeps with him as the first time she ever slept with him: wrapped around him from behind, her hand covering his heart, his hand covering her hand. He cannot see her but he can smell her all around him, hear her breathing, and follow that breathing into the dark. He finds, after frenzy and agony, that he is exhausted. Sleep comes easier, perhaps, than he might have expected.

So, too, do his dreams. Half nightmares, the aftertaste of his own rage taking him down a sickening spiral toward the Wyrm. Half mourning, seeing flickers of an old lifetime. Brawling in adolescence with Silver Warning, literally smashing each other's faces while rolling in the dirt. Hearing Red Vengeance howling, never quite finding her.

Hey.

Through the dreams, Lukas hears a voice. He wakes, or half-wakes, to it. The room is dark and sealed against the night. Danicka still sleeps. Distantly in his mind, so far away it's barely conceivable, small flames pulse in his mind. That pristine white, alert but silent. That 'hey' is Sinclair, on the other side of the world -- or at least an ocean -- calling to him. Not really in words, though. She's just there. Both of his sisters are there. Maddox, too. In some corner of his mind they gather around him, lean to him.

He isn't quite okay. But that is all right. He will be. Danicka shifts slightly behind him, her arm slack now around him. Her foot moves under the covers, slips between his calves. Sleep lures him under again. His dreams are quieter, this time. They are of pack.

In the morning -- or the tail end of it -- they go out walking. Breakfast is taken late, like an afterthought, but it is extensive. Even Danicka eats more than usual, but she is done long before Lukas has replenished himself. The streets outside are wet and the sun glints off of puddles between the cobblestones. They walk nowhere in particular. They slip in and out of shops, not talking much, and not needing to. Passing through the lower square, they see a repair crew examining the grate around the fountain.

Danicka glances at her palms as they walk, without saying anything, then slips her hand into Lukas's and leads him away. Much later, they wander through a garden near the castle itself, and

Lukas begins to talk to her. About all of it. Everything he said he wanted to tell her, and some things he simply needs to. Danicka sits with him on a low stone bench and just listens. She asks questions here and there, about Red, about how Lukas felt, but mostly she just lets him talk. From the first months she knew him to now, he has had moments of just spilling his thoughts out wholesale, discovering them even as he hears himself put them into words. For a man who plans so carefully, who thinks so logically, much of him simply... is. He is this way because he is this way.

Perhaps it says something that Danicka understands that. Danicka, who once told him that she doesn't try to reconcile herself with herself. Danicka, who even now sometimes simply just does things.

"I wish I could remember more," she does say, very softly. And: begins to tell him a few things, too.

Like how she was feeling strange from the first time they passed that fountain, took pictures in front of it, stared at it. Like how she fell asleep in the car, feeling drunk or drugged, and knew by instinct that she was not dreaming when Red first spoke to her. She tells him that she at least remembers that: that her heart leapt when she heard that voice in her own mind, sharing her mind. That she knew that voice, that presence, like she does not even know her own blood-kin.

Red told her what happened to them all, at least the broad strokes. Red had gotten to the part where the three of them met in the Homelands and that White Vision had sworn --

"I told her I knew," Danicka says to Lukas. "And I told her it was all right. I told her that you would go back with her, and she said... she knew you would. She said --"

it's who he is.

After that, she was just asleep. Til the eagle gate. Danicka tells him, blessedly, that she doesn't really remember it happening. It's like a dream, that pain. She could feel Red fighting to get back in control, but that's all she remembers of that incident. She doesn't remember what, really, happened to her hand. Or anything after that, until Red's ghost left her body entirely and they faced their brother and sister.

"He looked at me like he knew me," Danicka says, of Silver, "and some part of me felt like I knew him, too." Her head shakes. "Mostly I just wonder if I'll know them, if we meet them again."

Again, softly but not sorrowfully, as she leans to Lukas's side, as he draws her close: "I wish I could remember more."

Late that night, they call Sabina again. They meet at her house, and the 'kids' are there again, minus Tadeas, who has a date. Dinner is simple and includes leftovers. Zdenka engages Lukas and her uncle in a game of cards; Danicka and Sabina talk on the couch, at length, about what it was like when she changed, when Miloslav was taken, when her fosterage began. What they thought and felt when they heard about their halfbrother's birth, who now only one of them has met. The night stretches onward, until Zdenka takes herself home with a yawn. Danicka is thinking of driving back; Sabina tells her not to be silly. They will sleep there tonight, she says.

She insists. Even though the hotel isn't far.

Sitting on the couch, long after Sabina's husband has gone to bed, Danicka falls asleep against Lukas's arm in between the two wolves. His hand moves up and down her shoulder. Sabina, with the canny eyes of a truthteller, has been watching him all night. And though the moon outside is dark now, an empty black spot in the sky, she tells him quietly:

You should run with me tonight.

And by god, they run. Their kin are safe in a warm den together, the walls warded. Sabina howls prayers to Luna even as they are reaching the apex of their hunt in the spirit world. They tear apart the ethereal, quintessential self of an elk together, and the taste of its blood is the purest taste that has ever been lapped by his tongue. It is real and it is a part of him to do this, be this, sharing the memory of meat with blood-pack, spirit-pack, family-pack. They wait together, soaking in Gaia's grace, for the elk's spirit to rise again from its own remnants. It does, shaking coltishly as a newborn. Sabina bows to it, whuffs gratitude and honor. The elk bays, the tips of its fur glinting blue-white, and trots off to re-join its herd.

Danicka is still sleeping on the couch when Lukas comes back to her. She's under a blanket that Sarka knitted, that Lukas laid over her. She wakes up when he comes back in, and smiles drowsily at him. He takes her up the guest room, where

quietly, and gaspingly, and deeply,

she takes him under the covers, her hands holding onto his back and her thighs opened around him, holding him against her. They go slowly to keep quiet. Danicka's teeth press into his shoulder when she comes, her eyes rolling back and closing from the struggle to be silent. Sweat is a thin sheen on both their skins when it's over, though he goes on moving, panting as softly as he can, flexing into her like he can't stop it, though he can't bear it either. She's gone limp then, trembling like a leaf, calming when he kisses her.

Sabina isn't there in the morning when they get up. That's all right. They share a small breakfast with her mate and say one last goodbye, heading back to the hotel to shower and change and begin packing. It's their last day in Prague. That's when they go to all those shops they've seen here and there and Danicka buys presents for the kids back home, for her father, for herself, for Anezka and Daniel, for Lukas's parents. They have lunch at that restaurant they meant to go to. They visit that gallery they had been talking about. By dinner they are worn out, and afterwards sit on top of their bed, peeling oranges with their fingers and feeding each other segments. They discuss how to smuggle some back into the States. They fall asleep with bits of orange rind still under their fingernails.

The flight home is similar to the flight there. Except this: looking down at Prague as it recedes, Danicka's eyes become wet. She wipes them, sniffs, and tells Lukas before he can even tell her it will be okay: "We'll come back. As a family. We will."

She laughs at herself, saying that. Huffing the air out, amused and exasperated by her own high emotion. But Lukas answers her, echoes her:

We'll come back. We will.

the four.

The Sphinx

Touching him now is terrible for her. Danicka trembles and hides her face, and he shudders. But she doesn't let go, and his body melts back to his birth form. They are both filthy. Danicka's arm is bloody, too, stained in a fragile black web on her skin where the eagle tore through Red and somehow awakened her. He has so much blood on him. He can taste --

When his hands lift to cover hers, his mate's fingers flex. She grips his hands, recognizing them, and then she must open her eyes because she gasps.

They are naked. They would have no reason to wear clothes, these ghosts. Red is in hispo, though, and she is no lean, sleek-bodied creature as she was when she was wearing -- and changing -- Danicka's form. She is a nightmare given flesh, her eyes gleaming gold and her fur thick, glossy black. Her sides heave with powerful breath, and every exhale through her nostrils moves the mist around them. She is dead, as she has been dead for centuries. But finally -- finally -- he can see just how strong she was in life. God, what she must have been like in battle, roaring in the faces of their enemies like a hound at the gates of hell.

The man beside her does not look incorporeal, translucent, half-there. He seems solid and real enough. His skin doesn't have the swarthy olive cast of Lukas's, but is surprisingly pale. He is very tall. He is on the lean side, with a muscular athleticism that seems more flexible than stalwart. His eyes are green. His hair is the same inky black as Red's fur. He is, when Danicka gasps, kneeling beside his own body, his fingertips hovering a few centimeters above the wound that ended his life.

Ended all of this.

That gasp makes his eyes lift, sharp and canny. He wears a close-cut beard even in the first steps of his afterlife. He looks at Danicka first, though. His eyes widen a bit. They settle on her right arm, wrapped around Lukas. He blinks, and his eyes track to meet his brother's.

Then: Silver Warning lifts his eyebrows. And without ever seeing this man before, without knowing him in this life, Lukas knows exactly what his brother is thinking. It is, to put it bluntly, an appreciative, admiring, approving thumbs-up of a glance.

Niiice, he might say, laughing, if he had been born into this new era, this same age that Lukas and Danicka themselves took.

Black Wind

There are four of them.

It's almost inconceivable, what it took for that one statement to finally stand true. How many centuries, how many sacrifices, what burdens, what torments. How very close their strength came to failing, so many times. How far Silver Wind's mind drifted from him. How many times Red Vengeance must have watched her brother and sister cycling through yet another reincarnation and wanted to follow. How many times Lukas and Danicka themselves might have been born; how many of those lifetimes they might have spent without one another; how many of those lifetimes they might have come so close to one another, and to the gateway, and to Red Vengeance, without ever quite making that connection.

It's over now. He did unforgivable things, but maybe it was worth it. They suffered unimaginable things, but there are four of them now. Two of them are spirits that still recall their last life. Two of them are flesh, wholly different from the forms they wore --

Lukas doesn't know how long ago. He never asked, either.

A ragged laugh escapes him as he sees the look in Silver Warning's eyes. His hand closes a little more firmly over Danicka's forearm. It's not a possessive gesture. It's a sort of acknowledgement. Who they were, and are. And that they found each other.

There's a little room here. Enough time for words. Apologies; explanations. But Lukas ran out of words a long time ago, and no more are coming easily to mind now. He thinks maybe he doesn't need to apologize or explain himself now, anyway. Not to them. A few moments go by, and he's just looking at them, seeing them for the first time, remembering them from a past life.

He asks quietly: "When will you come back to us?"

The Sphinx

A few centuries ago, more or less, Black Wind would have nearly torn Silver Warning's head off for that glance, that smile. He would have misunderstood it, snarled at the other wolf. Hell: Wyrmbreaker might have, too, not so many years ago. Here and now, though, he understands it for what it is. Silver Warning is happy for them. Happy they found each other. Happy they are together. Happy that his sister, who was fragile and breakable and ...a little dotty the last time he knew her, is whole and hale and loved. God knows how many times his heart broke in those endless years of imprisonment; this helps a little.

Those he loves are together, and loved.

Silver Warning looks down at his own body, the wound he isn't touching, and then simply... walks away from it. He rises, too primitive in life and death both to feel shame, and puts his hand in the ruff at Red's neck. She gives a low, comforted whine, a whuff, and they come closer. He kneels down, right in front of Lukas, and Red follows, flopping onto her haunches. She thumps her tail on the ground, enormous in this form and refusing to shift from it. One of them has to be ready to protect, seems to be her mentality. Danicka is looking at her, arms tight around her mate's shoulders still, and though she quakes a bit, she doesn't bolt.

Silver Warning just stares at him, unable to look away. He just stares at them, both of them, like his eyes can't get enough. Like he's trying to memorize them. Lukas asks him when they'll come back. The question makes him blink. He hasn't spoken yet, and he looks to Red Vengeance for a moment. She just exhales a huff out from her nostrils. He looks at Danicka then, expectantly, like she'll be able to tell him. It takes a few seconds for Silver Warning to remember: she's not a Theurge anymore. She's not even, really, White Vision.

"I..." he begins, in a voice that is a stranger's and is intimately familiar all at once. It's low, but not the same depth as Lukas's. He doesn't sound tired or rasping, or like his voice hasn't been used in lifetimes. Like Red when she took Danicka's body, he speaks only Czech. "I do not know." His brow is furrowed, heavily, and without fear of awkwardness or strangeness, he reaches over and grabs Lukas's jaw.

Silver Warning, with that deep frown etched on his face that Lukas somehow knows means he is only thinking, wipes his blood off of Lukas's jaw. Scrubs at it with his palm, not energetically or fearfully, but firmly and efficiently. "We can now. That is what matters." His hand is bloody. He drops it, trades it for the other, lifting Lukas's face like he might a child's. As before, it seems like he simply can't help himself. He has to see him. He has to stare at him, after all these years. Just as Red, first waking in Danicka's body, reached to hold him.

"We will find you," he says, almost a snarl, and absolutely an oath. Without missing a beat, he takes that same hand and reaches for Danicka -- then pauses. He looks at Lukas, then puts his hand on the woman's forearm, where Lukas himself holds her. Gentler. He is more careful. She was broken before; she is kin now. He doesn't know how strong she's become. His frown eases at the edges when he meets her eyes, green to green. Something seems to pass through the two of them, some kind of understanding. "We will," he says again, quieter, as though to assure Danicka, too.

Red grunts. She thumps her tail, restless. Silver glances at her, that frown flickering for a moment into a wry half-glare at her. It's pained, though. "Impatient," he mutters at her, intrinsically mocking and incredibly... tender, actually. She rumbles in her throat at him; he grins.

Black Wind

The blood on his jaw is all Silver Warning's. The blood from the snake is gone; perhaps it never was at all. The blood on his hands, which is his own and Danicka's as well, never touched his face.

He lifts his face when his brother takes it. He closes his eyes for a moment as he is cleansed. The swipe is heavy and unhesitating; it doesn't come close to removing the stain. The blood is still there. But it's on Silver Warning now too, and somehow that seems to make a difference. It makes his heart hurt a little less.

As Silver Warning reaches out to Danicka, Lukas spreads his fingers open. His hand overlaps his brother's for a moment. Then he gently disentangles himself, standing. If Danicka stands, he reaches out to her again. He takes her hand, and now they are facing each other, two and two.

"She's not." Old habits don't die at all, it seems. Even now, he has to argue with Silver one more time: "She's just been patient for a very long time."

There's a small silence. He looks at Red Vengeance; at Silver Warning; back again.

"We'll see you again," he says. "Soon."

The Sphinx

Danicka does rise with him, half-hidden behind his arm, partly because of Red Vengeance's shape. The two look at each other, Silver and Red, not understanding, but not asking. Red rises to all fours, and her tail gives one heavy swipe through the air.

She's not, Lukas says, and Silver Warning gives a sharp exhale. "Even once!" he exclaims, exasperated. "Even once, you can not stop from arguing. I am dead and you are many lives ahead of me, and still you can not stop." He waves his arm in midair, dismissive and fed up and, at least this time, giving in.

Danicka laughs, softly, against Lukas's arm. She slides her hand down his forearm, his wrist, to lace their fingers together. Her other hand reaches toward Red, full of anxiety, and Red keens quietly before nuzzling against that open palm. They shared a body, for a time.. Neither even so much as speaks. They had their own understanding, in that life and in this.

Silver Warning watches the two of them, aching, then meets Lukas's eyes. He nods. This one last time, he doesn't argue. No more words are spoken between the four of them. No embraces, no more promises. They have made the only oaths they must, the only promises they can keep.

The world melts into white, the mist covering the four of them, swirling among them and between them. Danicka's hand tightens on Lukas's.

The world is dark now. Colors, smells and noises all rush back. Rain falls on cobblestones around them, filtering the scent of dirt and stone and motor oil up to their nostrils. It's the middle of the night and, blessedly, this street is briefly deserted. Danicka shivers, suddenly and violently, pressing herself to Lukas's always-warmer flesh. They are naked. They are naked and wet and cold and exposed, and she says the first words she has said since she named him her love:

"Oh god. Oh god, oh god. Lukáš, my ring is gone. Lukáš," she says, her voice wracked, even as rain begins saturating her hair. She's holding herself but, suddenly, the only thing that seems to matter to her -- nevermind the street, the emptiness, the exposure, all of it -- is that she can't find her wedding ring.

Black Wind

Even once! Silver Warning bursts out, and Lukas laughs. It's the first time he's really laughed for longer than he can remember. Since before this realm. Since before Red Vengeance. Since before Danicka fell ill. Moments ago he wasn't sure he'd ever laugh again, but --

he does. Wounds heal; life goes on.

There are no real goodbyes. Perhaps there never are, and never should be, for the four of them. Their eyes meet; Lukas doesn't look away or close his eyes, but he loses sight of his brother and his sister all the same. The world goes to white,

and then to dark.

And it's wet, and it's quite cold, and his cheeks are wet too, and he doesn't know if it's rain or tears. He swipes his hand over his face -- there's still blood there -- and then he wraps his arm, protective, around Danicka. She panics: her ring! He laughs, even though he has no right to. He's the one that stopped in the middle of the third and final and most wracking gate just to dedicate it to his spirit.

"It's on my hand," he says, laughing still, hugging her, kissing her temple, her cheek. "It's okay. I have it."

Danicka

Danicka is shaking, from cold and from fear and, simply, being overwhelmed. She doesn't even seem to mind or care that Lukas laughs. She tucks herself against him as soon as his arms come to shield her, her breath shaking.

"Give it back," she tells him, panting from the cold.

Black Wind

His arms are wrapped around her by then. He has her tucked against his chest, her back to his front; he responds by holding his hand up where she can see and opening his fingers. Her ring is there, as he promised. It glints that soft, rosy gold, but it's far larger than it was; large enough to fit at the base of his fourth finger, snug against his own, darker ring.

It shrinks as she pulls it off. Like a visual trick, an optical illusion, it grows smaller as his finger tapers; when she gets it off entirely, it's the same size it ever was, and warm against her skin.

"Let's get off the street," he says. He's looking around now, growing aware of where they are -- how exposed they are. "We can ... go along the rooftops. If you can stand my form."

Danicka

Her ring should never fit on his hand. Not his ring finger, not his little finger. But it does. There it is, glinting white against his light-absorbing black. She exhales, in shock and in relief, and reaches for it. Watches it grow smaller as she slips it off of his finger, returning to its normal size when she slips it onto her own.

Danicka was raised by wolves. She doesn't ask him what he did. She knows. Her hand closes into a fist. He says they should get off the street and she nods, shivering despite being held. She closes her eyes. "I'll stand it."

Doesn't matter if she can or not. She will.

Black Wind

Lukas doesn't ask again. He doesn't look for confirmation. He doesn't even acknowledge. Not verbally, anyway. He crouches: his back to her, the complex musculature flanking his shoulderblades standing out against his skin as his hands press against the concrete for balance. For a moment his skin is hot against hers, wet with rain. The press of her thighs against his sides is jarringly familiar; it feels intimate and out of place, as though they should not be here at all but somewhere private, hidden, wild.

And then he changes. Her arms wrapped around his thickening neck, his broadening shoulders, find themselves unable to stay wrapped. She has to grasp handfuls of fur -- because he has fur now, thick and musky with the scent of strength and health and alpha-wolf -- to keep from sliding off altogether. He's still growing, pulling her up his back with the sheer expansion of his skeleton. Her knees are tucked against his ribs now, just under his scapulae. The handpaw that touches hers, securing her grip, is huge, is burning hot, is padded and rough.

The strength coiled in this body is surreal; explosive. He launches forward. The first leap eats half the plaza and the width of the street. Wind claws through her hair, his fur. The next is purely vertical, launching them upwards, rain stinging her bare skin. Stone crumbles under his claws as he scrabbles for purchase. Then that detonation of force again, and they're on the rooftops, leaping, running, running, leaping again.

Maybe some part of Danicka remember what this is like, now. Felt it when Red Vengeance shared her body. Remembers it from a past life, one where she wasn't blind and crippled and dotty. Remembers what it was to run tirelessly, to leap so far she could nearly fly, to thrash foes apart with silver-tipped claws. What it was to curl around her mate, to be vigilant even in sleep, because sometimes in those lifetimes he was not her brother, and not her wolf, but

her kin. Hers.

They drop onto their terrace from above. His weight makes the structure shudder. Danicka slides off his back and he plants his feet, shakes rain off. Pushes up on two legs. Shifts down, dripping, skimming rain from his hair and his face and his shoulders, shivering now with the sudden loss of his fur.

They get their terrace door open. They tumble inside, and the hotel still smells like a hotel, but it's beginning to smell like them. Her suitcase is still open on the bed, where he put it to find clothes for Red-Vengeance-in-her-body. No time seems to have passed at all. A handful of hours, at most.

Lukas isn't sure what to say. He isn't sure it's necessary to say anything at all. He closes the door behind them; he closes the curtains.

They are two again.

Danicka

Danicka remembers. Remembers Red in her body. Remembers the deal they made. Remembers the promise Red gave her: no, not that form. I swear, sister.

And Danicka remembers some hints of her other lives that all this brought back to her, but none so clear as those Lukas was given. She doesn't, truthfully, remember being White Vision. She doesn't remember her crippled arm, her prophecies. She doesn't remember the secret the Sphinx-Snake gave her in that test, or what it was like to be any of the things she has been.

She is only kin in this life. She is cut off, powerfully, from her ancestors. She cannot enter the homelands until her death. She sacrificed much, in this life, to find him again and be his mate and not his sister, not his mother, not his child or his friend. The way Silver Warning looked at her, she almost remembered him. But mostly, she just knew that he understood.

What Danicka remembers most is horror. She is shaking, violently, even as Lukas begins to change. Her will is strong enough now that she doesn't scream when she climbs onto him and he shifts. She closes her eyes and locks her jaw, hard, until her teeth grind against each other. Tears are already in her eyes. Terror makes her cling. Terror makes her think, briefly and madly, of letting go to get away from him.

She can't remember those lives where she leapt like this. The only life she has, tonight, is her own. And those memories overpower the dim ones she touches in dreams.

Danicka slides off of him, nearly jumps off of him. Her legs give out as she grabs the door, all but running from him. Inside, onto the bed, grabbing at the covers as violently as she held his fur. She's hyperventilating, or close to it, pulling the covers up to her body madly, her body heaving with panic. Her face is wet from rain, from cold sweat, from tears.

It hurts to see. It hurts, surely, that she can't help it. He can't know that she even made Red promise not to change her body to crinos. He felt her shaking even when Red nuzzled her in hispo. Danicka fights for control, while he... maybe he closes the doors and the curtains still, maybe he simply gives her the time to calm down. She knows he isn't shaped like that anymore. All the same she wants to wash away from herself the feel of that fur against her body, and when that thought passes through her mind, it renews her crying all over again. Her hands cover her face as she inhales and exhales sharply, shallowly, choking on her own tears and her own horror.

Still: when she can, though it is quiet and it is truncated by the tightness and thickness in her throat, she says his name.

Black Wind

Lukas's heart breaks a little when they've hardly landed on the terrace before she's getting off of him, getting away from him, scrabbling at the door, flinging it open with panicked strength and running away.

He stays where he is. He shakes rain from his fur, blinks rain out of his eyes. And much slower, taking his time, he follows her in his human shape. Closes the door. Turns on a light, so she doesn't have to be in darkness with his rage. Closes the curtains. Gives her room, as much as he wants to go to her, curl around her in his largest, warmest form, protect her.

She can't stand that. She never could. He thought for a moment, there in the spirit-world, there where she wrapped her arms around him while he wore his most terrifying form, where she reached out to her sister while she wore her dread wolf form -- he thought ...

he was wrong. It doesn't matter.

He's in the bathroom, and the bathtub is plugged and the water is running, when he hears her say his name. So he comes back out, drying his hands on a washcloth, coming to the bed. His hand searches for hers and finds it, covers it.

"I'm here," he says. And gently, "Come wash."

Danicka

In that strange place, half-spirit and half-form, she remembered how he reacted when she fell ill. How he was when Red took her body. She felt the blast of his rage when she woke up, suddenly, to searing pain. She was with him, though it was like walking in a dream, when he killed Silver Warning. And coming back to her own body, feeling Red Vengeance leave her forever, Danicka thought

if I do not love him now

...but there were no words to follow that. No thoughts. Only certainty, and a gathering of her shaken will. She felt herself burning when she touched him. Kept her eyes closed to try and pretend he was in some other form, but the smell is different. The feel of him is different. It isn't as soft. His breathing changes. Even his heartbeat seems unfamiliar. It is a weakness and a shame she has borne since she was a child. She was told for years on end how worthless this made her, how soft, how broken she is.

He thought that maybe it was over, that maybe she was okay now, she was healed, that something had changed, but... he wasn't quite right. She has healed so much. She is so much more okay. She doesn't think she's damaged anymore, broken, empty, weak. All that has changed is her love for him.

And all that has done is grown.

Danicka is half whispering, half whimpering his name. She wants him near. She doesn't want to be alone, abandoned. She doesn't want him to think she hates him. When he comes back to her she is struggling to open her eyes, as though afraid of what she'll see. That is the longest contact she has had with a crinos-formed werewolf for twenty years. But he's not in his war form. He's Lukas. Her Lukas.

She almost cries out when she sees him, and then it isn't almost. Danicka all but climbs onto him, curled tight, burying her face against the side of his neck. Her hands are small, hard fists against his back when he lifts her up in human arms. Her tears are hot.

She keeps telling him she's sorry. He keeps telling her no.

Two tub-fuls of hot water later, Danicka has stopped shaking. She is molten in his arms now, her eyes heavy-lidded with weariness and emotion. But she's gone quite, and is turned in such a way to hold him, too. The fear has passed. One of her arms is looped around his shoulders, though her head rests on his chest. The water laps at the side of the tub. Her left hand, wearing the ring that is still dedicated to his spirit, rests atop his right pectoral. She can feel his heart beating on the inside of her forearm.

"She showed me a little of what it was like," Danicka whispers, after a very long silence. "In the snake's chamber. What it was like for her all that time ago, though. She said it..." Danicka's head shakes a little. "She didn't really have words for what it did to her. I asked if it made her stronger. And she said that maybe one day I would remember."

Her hand opens over his skin, the same temperature as her own. Her voice falls to a whisper: "Are you okay?"

Black Wind

When she was terrified and shaken, he barely dared to touch her. He only took her hand because he didn't want her to feel him looming over her, didn't want her to feel his hand suddenly descending on her back or her head. Didn't want to feel her flinch.

But she doesn't flinch. She opens her eyes, she sees him, she climbs onto him and wraps herself around him so tight. The way he holds her then -- it's the way shipwreck survivors cling to land. It's the way long-lost lovers

(or packmates)

cling to each other.

Much later, they are cleansing themselves. The blood is gone from his skin. The rain is gone. The smell of his fur, too. And they are holding each other. And his pulse is beating in his chest, and against her wrist. And the water is warm; it makes him whole again.

"I wasn't," he admits. "And for a while, I wasn't sure I ever would be again."

He stirs. The water laps softly at the edge of the tub, and at the edges of their body. His hand passes warm over her back, sluicing water along her spine.

"But then you put your arms around me. And then I could open my eyes, and they were there, and...

"I'm not quite okay yet. I have to think. To put it all together in my head. And ... maybe tomorrow, or maybe some other day altogether, I have to tell you what happened in the snake's chamber, and I have to tell you what happened in that life we shared with them so long ago. Because you were there too. And you deserve to know.

"I'm not okay yet," he finishes softly, "but I will be. I will, love."

the sphinx.

The Sphinx

Naked, bloody, smelling rot and his own vomit, smelling his own sweat and terror and rage and exhaustion, Lukas starts screaming.

Nothing happens. The snake does not magically re-form and heal itself. The Sphinx does not appear to stroke his hair back and purr at him. No hammer falls, no knife through his neck. His pack does not appear, their minds and spirits healed, their bodies restored. Nothing is undone. Nothing is fixed. It's just quiet, and he is still alone.

The snake's head just lies there, the eyes cold, the tongue motionless, as surely it has been since he tore it apart. Killed it. Ate it.

Behind Lukas, there is the creak of a gate opening.

Standing there framed by darkness is the Sphinx, still in her robe, looking at him. Behind her he can see the mist, the 'guests', and he can see Red Vengeance shapeshifted into a small black wolf nuzzling Silver Warning as he lolls his tongue and wags. They peer at Lukas from around the Sphinx's robes. The Sphinx herself looks at him, then at the -- understandably few -- remnants of the serpent. Back to Lukas.

"Well," she says, mildly. She seems unperturbed. Her golden eyes pin on his. "Now the question is: would you like to know how you may help end the war in your lifetime, or would you like me to remove the silver from your friend?" There's a pause, as she throws this question at him as though it will not alter his life, as though it will not alter the world. Her lightly clawed hand waves gently in midair. "I will bid you and the female farewell either way. But the choice is yours."

Black Wind

The creak of the gate makes him startle. He is stripped down to the core, naked in every sense. He reacts as an animal might, wheeling, crouched, his balance low and ready.

The world awaits him outside. He's not sure how long he's been in here. Surely not long at all, and yet: long enough that even that imaginary realm looks more real than anything he's ever seen before. His pupils constrict to pinpoints, seared by sudden light. He can hardly stand to be seen like this by his pack, by his brother and his sister and the sleeping spirit of his mate. By the one that did this to him.

She's not finished. She gives him a choice, and he nearly screams at her again, nearly flies into a frenzy again and throws himself at her, tries to tear her face off, tries to eat her flesh whole. That's not fair, he thinks, that's not fair, not fair, not fair, those weren't the rules.

The rage doesn't come, though. And he makes a small, muffled sound, a moan that is despair and distress, as low and bare as he's ever been. His shoulders tremble as his weight goes to his hands. He hangs his head for a moment, and then his sides heave, and he

pushes

himself up.

"I want you to free my brother," he says. Every muscle in his body is quivering finely, but his voice is steady, and level, and very quiet. "You know that's what I want."

The Sphinx

At that moan, both of the lean black wolves push forward to try and get to him, keening softly in answer. The Sphinx bars their way and they paw at the gate, at her robes, while Lukas shakes. She is impassive.

Her eyes follow his as he stands. He gives the answer he was always going to give, though his heart was broken in there, though he was broken open in there. In truth, the answer he gives now is just like the answer he gave at the beginning. It is the same as his first answers to Red Vengeance when she took his mate's body. It is the truth of who he is, and what he knows, and why he came.

It is who he is.

After that, there is no why. Only this, steadily but quietly spoken.

The Sphinx tips her head slightly at that. "I know nothing," she says, in that lovely accent of hers. "That is why I am here."

Her hand lifts, palm toward Lukas. Her fingers form a strange shape, briefly seen before she draws an arcane symbol in the air. The silver drops from his brother's neck and limbs. He barks happily, gives a light bound in place, but does not shift, does not run. The gate vanishes. The snake vanishes. All as one, everything is gone but the three -- four -- of them.

They are in mist again, as they were when he and Red Vengeance first appeared past the lion's gate, only now there's no lion. Just a man covered in blood and bile and scales, a black wolf with his beloved's eyes, and

Silver Warning, jumping and running delighted circles around them. He licks at Red Vengeance, bumps against Lukas. And Red Vengeance looks at him, unwilling or unable to shift.

There is one more thing they have to do.

Black Wind

It was the answer Lukas was always going to give,

only it's not. Two years ago he might not have given this answer. Four years ago, when he was Edward's Beta and his head was full of how great they were going to be, what heroes, what self-sacrificing noble epitomes of Garouhood, he might not have given that answer. He might have demanded the key to the War. He might have made his piles, the Worth It and the Not Worth It, and firmly cast Silver Warning into the latter.

But then; four years ago he was also the sort of Garou who drew harsh lines everywhere he looked. Good and bad. Worth it and not. Truth and lie. Crime and punishment. He was the sort of Garou who did monstrous things sometimes because he refused to bend. Refused to bow. Refused to see that truth was a mutable thing; that causation and consequence were, in the end, only masks for elemental emotion and instinctual drive.

Lukas bows now. He's never bowed so low; never hollowed himself out so utterly. He's raw as a bare nerve, skinless, flayed, defenseless. And yet for all that, without reason, without need for reason: absolutely certain. There is the war, the abstract, the lofty, the cold.

And then there is pack. The deep, undying bonds that bind him to everything that matters.

He gives his answer. There is no further discussion. The chains vanish. The Sphinx vanishes. The Sphinx's court vanishes, and the questions he's left with -- his own whys -- remain unanswered. Of course they do. She's the Sphinx. Lukas thinks perhaps Red Vengeance is wrong; perhaps she's no ascended willworker but a spirit after all. A notion. The essence of enigma: her very existence is a riddle with no solution.

And then it's just them, the four of them in three bodies. One of them is so happy. One of them is looking to him to do the impossible. And his wrath licks up again; it isn't fair. He can't do it. He can't do it, he goes to his knees and he puts his arms around his brother, feels his squirming warm body and the thickness of his fur, smells the familiar scent that he remembers from lifetimes ago. He can't do it,

but he will.

And he does.

He has nothing left after that. His brother's blood is in his mouth. He holds the body fast in his arms and as the strength drains out of it, as gravity pulls it to the ground, he goes with it. Bends over it, curls around it, feels a low keening well up in the pit of his stomach. He lets it out, but it's too raw, and it sticks in his throat; he can't make a sound; he can't breathe. He buries his face against the thick ruff and he doesn't move. He thinks maybe he was wrong. Maybe he should have accepted to Sphinx's offer after all. An undying eternity together, mindless, simple, mammalian: maybe that was mercy.

Maybe he was wrong.

The Sphinx

The noise is horrible.

It's quick, it's sharp and over in a moment but... it's still horrible. Silver Warning doesn't understand. He isn't weak, and the part of Lukas that was once Black Wind knows he never was, but he is not expecting this. His brother embraces him. His brother -- suddenly, his arms tightening and jaws tearing -- kills him. Silver Warning yelps, almost a whine, but it never quite gets there. His spine goes limp, his head lolled.

Red is beside herself. She lunged forward, though it's uncertain if she was going to stop it or going to help him, and that motion is truncated. She shakes, and she begins to howl, wracked and impossible, like she is sobbing. She can't help herself. After everything, after all this, all she can do is howl. Even if it is tinged with relief, she is howling for centuries of sorrow. Her lean body lies down against Lukas's, in contact with both of her brothers, until the howling turns to keening, until even the keening subsides. All she does is breathe.

Smooth, slender arms slide around Lukas's shoulders. God knows how long it's been quiet, how long he has had his face buried against his brother, how long Red's silence and Silver Warning's death and Danicka's slumber have left him alone with his grief, alone with the aftermath of his frenzy, alone with... all of this.

But she's there, then. Despite his form and despite the body he clings to. Her hair falls in a loose, cool curtain across his face as her own turns into the fur along his neck. He can smell her again, feel her holding him from behind one massive shoulder.

"Oh, laska," she is whispering, and then trembles. "Moje laska."

And then, quite without warning but not without sympathy,

someone is trying to unwind his arms and lift Silver Warning's body from him.

Black Wind

He should

do something.

He should do something for his sister. And her grief. He should help her somehow. Isn't that his job, his role, his duty? He is her Alpha. He should do something.

But he can't. There's nothing left of his strength. He's done unimaginable things; things he could not have comprehended or forgiven in anyone else. He's fallen in a frenzy so catastrophic he took on an aspect of the Devourer Wyrm; became the very thing he abhors most. He's dragged himself trembling out of that ragged red sea of rage to prostrate himself on the shore and admit to a pitiless god: he doesn't know, he doesn't know, in the end all his thoughts, all his principles, all his virtues, all his determination cannot be yoked to any rational reason. He has no logical center after all. He is a product of his attachments, his emotions, the things he needs.

And he needs his brother back, his pack together, more than he needs to win the war. He always thought it would be the other way around; that if what he loved most and what he was born to do hung by the same fraying thread, he would choose duty over love.

That wasn't true either. He's chosen his brother over the war, the War against the Wyrm, the very reason their race exists. It's cowardly. It's selfish. It is unforgivable.

And then: he kills his brother.

There's no Sphinx now to hold the mirror to his soul. There's no terrible, soft voice asking him again and again, leeching the reasons out of him: why, why, why. He has only himself to answer:

because he had to.
because it was right.
because he is who he is.
because there is no reason,
simply himself, staring back from the beginning.

There's a touch on his shoulder, a soft cool hand reaching fingers into his thick fur. He startles. Then, as his mate slides her arms around him - how is it possible, how does she have the strength? - he shudders.

The tension in his grip loosens. Someone is taking Silver Warning from him, and he doesn't snarl, he doesn't lash out. He allows it. The enormity of his shoulders shears away. The fur recedes. He grasps at the hands around his shoulders, grips them with drowning strength. His breath escapes him in a gasp, and then he remembers how to inhale again.

the serpent gate.

The Sphinx

Silver Warning wags his tail, looking adoringly up at Lukas. He doesn't know him with this face, this smell, but he knows his eyes and his soul. They were brothers once -- as far as Silver Warning is concerned, they are brothers now. Whatever has happened to his mind in the interminable years he has survived in this prison, it has made him incapable of understanding what is at stake. Above and beyond all other concerns, his pack is together. The pack he has been bound to in spirit for lifetime upon lifetimes. His soul's pack.

Red Vengeance is much the same. With Silver Warning in her arms she is quickly laying down all armor, all defenses. In the end, what has kept her going for all these years has been this mission, this need. Some part of her is willing to simply put down that burden, close her eyes, and become mindless and silver-shackled, if that's what it takes. If that's what it means for them to all be together again, maybe it's worth it. It would be easier than another hundred years of torment, loneliness, desperation. She looks back at Lukas, shame widening and darkening the eyes she has borrowed from his wife, and hopes he hears her apology. She, like their brother, has simply run out of strength.

The Sphinx turns, and walks with him toward her couch, toward the gate beyond it. The snake, that enormous python, waits for him to pass its head. Only when he walks by does it turn its heavy body and follow. When they reach the couch, Lukas can glance down and see the middle -- not even the end -- of the snake's body still pressed against the couch's legs. Maybe it goes on forever. Maybe it encircles the roots of the world.

She puts her hand in front of the swirls of gold that make up the gate, palm forward and arm straight. They swing open. They walk through into white.

It sears his vision like looking into the sun. The sounds of music and chatter fade, as does the knowledge of his spirit-pack and his soulmate. There is the clank of the gate closing behind him, latching just like it would in the 'real' world.

There is no mist here. It's much darker, though there is still some faint light to see by. As before, it comes from nowhere. Everything looks dull gray, 'everything' being the area around himself and a matter of several feet in front of him. All else is shadow. There is nothing to see. He is alone.

Black Wind

If Lukas could, he would tell Red Vengeance she has no cause for shame. None whatsoever. She's borne this burden alone, and for so long. Borne it so that he and White Vision could be reborn, could go into the world, could forget, could find each other, could be happy. Borne it so that he wouldn't have to.

She has no cause for shame. She has no cause for guilt. He understands why she lays her burden down, finally: he wishes he could tell her that. It's his turn to bear the weight -- and the responsibility. And the guilt, should he fail.

He says none of this. He passes her, and his adoring, happy, poor, mindless brother. He doesn't even reach out to squeeze Red's hand, which is really Danicka's hand. Nor does he look back.

The gates close behind him. It is as it was before: they don't know what happens after that.

On the other side, it is darker and duller. Lukas is not surprised. Here it is then, he thinks. The truth of it, here in the dimness. He looks about, but there's nothing and no one to see. After a moment, he kneels down. It is a calm motion, efficient. He takes his coat off and folds it beside him. He takes his wife's ring off his finger and,

absurdly,

he begins to go through the ritual of dedication. He has no idea if it will work here. He has no idea what he should be doing right now. This seems as good a task as any.

The Sphinx

Something heavy moves against Lukas's left foot, sliding past. He will know it for what it is that instant. He may not know this about himself: may only see the scar on his abdomen and the nightmares Danicka had for months and the loss of Mrena and the failures, god, the failures, but his packmates know the sharpness of his mind. He was a Philodox in the last life where his entire pack was together. He was their leader, and not because he was perfect. But he saw farther than they did, even White Vision. Not always deeper. But he knew things for what they were. He knew where they would end up.

The snake does not shy away from him, as most real snakes would. As he is dedicating his wife's wedding ring to his body, creating a bond between it and his own spirit, it simply passes by him, rubbing against the outside of his leg, and slithers ahead. Even when it reaches the farthest visible distance from him and begins to draw its body into coils, he cannot find the end of it.

It waits for him. The ring cleaves to his soul. When he slides it further down his finger, it grows to accomodate the size. It hugs his finger, nestled next to his own wedding ring, and begins to warm to his body heat. The snake watches him, head just a few inches from a nonexistent ground, and tastes the air with a flickering tongue. Still it says nothing.

Black Wind

The hairs on the back of his neck stand upright when that snake slithers past. There's so much length there; an endless sinuous dryness that just keeps sliding on. The cuffs of his pants ruck up a bit. He feels it against his shin, and he has to fight a shudder.

He finishes what he's doing, though. And when the ring slides easily to rest beside his own, complements in dark and bright, he gets to his feet. He begins to walk toward where the snake is coiled. Which is to say: he walks toward its head. He doesn't know where the tail is. Perhaps it has none. Perhaps it's as eternal as this realm seems to be, and as endless.

If the snake remains as it is, he eventually catches up to it. And then he too sits, crosslegged this time, facing it. Waiting.

The Sphinx

No hiss or strike awaits him. The snake does not send its length out to coil around him, press in on him. He walks toward it and it merely watches him.

Still: it says nothing.

Black Wind

So they wait there. Minutes past. Perhaps hours. Time flows strangely here. There are no suns, no stars, no sky to track its movement by.

At length, Lukas moves again. His hands, which were previously at rest over his knees, turn palm-up. He extends them toward the snake, like a martyr showing his stigmata. He waits to see if it will strike him. Perhaps he expects it.

Black Wind

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Black Wind

[it is 1 succ if that was a frenzy check!]

The Sphinx

It does not grow weary.

It does not grow bored.

It does not grow angry.

There is no pride here, nor demand. Attempts by the mind to understand this place or this creature as beautiful or ugly, comforting or frightening, begin to melt together. Disgust flows together with tenderness. In the darkness he begins to hear nothing but his own breathing, which keeps slow time with the snake's sides. Coiled as it is, its breathing pushing its sides out and then pulling them back in, the snake seems to ripple slightly.

His palms extend to the snake, an offering. And in time, after a long regard, the snake moves its head forward. It rests the bottom of its head on top of his hands. Its tongue flickers out, and the fork dances across the thin flesh over his wrists.

In that heartbeat, rage roars through him. The desire to grab the snake and squeeze until its eyes burst, until its flesh rips, until he tears its head from its body, is almost too much to resist. It has taken his mate and his brother and his sister. It has denied him the wholeness of his pack for generations. It cast his brother in silver. His mate is trapped inside of his sister now because of this thing. It takes the form of a serpent; surely it is of the Wyrm.

It would be right to slaughter it. Just. He will protect the weak. He will slay the Wyrm. He will use up his anger on this thing, as he is meant to.

The longing passes. The red haze shivers and dissipates. The snake watches him, resting its head so trustingly in his palms. Time goes on, though not as much. A voice whispers in his mind, struggling and weak, sounding faraway and half asleep:

whyyy

Black Wind

More than half a lifetime living with his rage, and somehow the abruptness and potency of its rise can still surprise him. He is not an arrogant man, but perhaps he possesses a form of hubris after all: to think he can ever truly control his rage. To think he will ever truly master the beast within.

The snake dances its tongue over his pulse. Rage nearly consumes him. It is whole and it is complete, it swallows his mind. He gasps with the force, or perhaps he pants. There's something strangely, revoltingly intimate about this promise of violence. The pain he wants to inflict is deep and visceral and lingering.

It lingers;

it passes.

And then a voice not his own makes its way into his mind. His pupils constrict a little. There are so many whys he could answer. He seizes the first, the freshest:

"Because you've taken what is whole and sundered it to pieces. Because you've taken my mate from me. Because you've taken half my pack from me and left them suspended, half alive and half dead. Because I had to come here to fix the mess. Because if I don't, I'll never get my pack back. I'll never get my mate back. Because your motives are a mystery to me, and you don't seem to care at all about what we think or feel or need, and I hate you for it."

Beat.

"That's why I wanted to kill you. But -- "

There it is, that treacherous word. But. Because he is not perfect, but he sees far. Because he is not merely his scars and his wounds and his strength and his teeth. Because he is not a dumb beast, a simple brute:

" -- I know none of that is true. It's cowardly and selfish to shift the blame so completely. We came here of our own volition, lifetimes ago. We agreed to your rules. And then one of us failed, and then we broke the rules we agreed to, and that's why Silver Warning had to stay, and that's why Red Vengeance died, and that's why I died, and that's why White Vision went mad.

"That's why I'm angry at Silver Warning. Because he failed.

"But that's cowardly and selfish too. Because I was the Alpha. I was responsible. And in the end I have no one to blame but myself, for coming here in the first place. For leading my pack here. For leaving one behind to be ... subjugated in such a way. I should have killed him rather than let him suffer that fate. But I didn't, and I ran, and then I died, and then I let my sister bear the burden that should have been mine. For centuries. Because I was cowardly. And selfish. And if only Red Vengeance had not found me, had not spoken to me through my mate's form, I wouldn't have had to remember any of that. I wouldn't have had to confront it.

"That's why I'm angry at Red Vengeance. Because she reminded me of what I wanted to forget.

"And that, too, is cowardly and selfish. Because she did the right thing. Because it's right that I should remember. It's right that I should take responsibility for what happened. Atone. Set things right, if I can. Because ... I don't want to be a coward anymore. I don't want to be selfish. I want my mate back. I want my pack freed. I want to set right what I made wrong."

There it is, the beating heart. He pauses a moment; lets the notion linger in his own mind until he can recognize it for the truth. The snake's head is in his hands. A symbol of evil, of corruption, of cunning, of wisdom, of healing, of fertility, of truth. The fruitbearing tree of knowledge; the closing gates of eden.

"That's why I'm here," he finishes softly.

Black Wind

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 3, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Black Wind

[ERK! *WINCE*]

Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Black Wind

[NO WHYYYYY]

The Sphinx

He almost kills the snake. It trusts him anyway.

Finally, then, comes the question he had to know was coming. The question it asked him in another life, the question it asked Silver Warning and Red Vengeance and White Vision. It was an exchange, wasn't it? Some secret to help end the war. They could have walked away with that precious knowledge, intimate to each of them, and left Silver Warning forever. They didn't.

All the creator of this place wanted was an answer: why?

So Lukas answers.

The snake rests against him, surprisingly warm for a reptile, and there is only silence. No gate appears, no lights illuminate the darkness, no escape makes itself known. No insight blossoms in his mind. And no strike comes. He opens his heart, spills it all out, and

there is only silence.

Everything is cold around him. Quiet. Terrifying, in a way, making this island of even dim light all the more appealing. Making the warmth of the snake all the more comforting. Only its eyes see him, and its eyes do not judge him. Staring at it, being stared at by it, Lukas can only sense that he is not alone, and it is because of this creature here. He is not seen as a coward or a hero or an Alpha. He is not called selfish or self-sacrificing, truthful or honorable or brave. He is just Lukas. Without his pack and without his family and without his mate he is still himself, and that is all he has ever needed to be and

it feels very much like being loved.

The snake begins to move, as though it can tell he will welcome it now, and it begins to run its head further up his arms. Its tongue flickers across the inside of his elbow. Its body is heavy when it begins to pull it across Lukas's lap, but that strength and weight is oddly gentle. When the rest of the snake's body begins to encircle him, not pressing but merely surrounding him where he sits, it is enough to make a part of him tremble. The snake's upper body rests over his chest, against his shoulder, as though embracing him.

whyyy

it whispers then, shattering that warmth, that intimacy, that love with the word. So: he is not enough. He is a coward and he is a hero and he is an Alpha. He cannot ever just be himself, his soul, alone and accepted. He is the stupid scar on his belly, he is Mrena's death while he was spiraling into self-pity, he is Danicka's blood on his hands, Danicka's children despising him, Red Vengeance's lonely eternity, Silver Warning's shackles. He is every failure he has ever had. None of it is ever enough. Could he start this life over, begin again, protect Danicka from childhood, it would not be enough. Could he go back ten lives, a hundred lives, the beginning of time, he would still fail.

A howl boils up from his gut. A grief-stricken fury knots his muscles and his joints and tears open his mind. He wants to rip the snake from his very body, end that lying embrace, shake it til it snaps, punish it for this, for how it makes him feel, for what it is doing for no damn reason, but

that, too, passes. He has some control still. But not his heart. His heart is breaking. Still he has to answer this question.

For the second time, words pour out of him. Again the snake listens in silence, wrapped around him. It has draped itself across his shoulders, holds its head to one side, swaying, watching him, only inches from his face this time.

Again, the depths of his heart opened up, and it is not enough.

whyyy

The answer is simple this time. His mind does not go white. It does not go red.

It goes black.

The part of Lukas that knows glory, honor, or wisdom escapes from his body for a time. The part of him that is soul and mind, love and pride, simply shuts its eyes and ears and hides. Frenzy is a sort of cowardice and a sort of mercy, in one. The part of him that knows and remembers and feels is permitted to sleep, while

the rest of him

destroys.

Vision returns to his eyes and sensation returns to his flesh. He has not lost Danicka's ring again. He feels blood all over his body, already cooling. He tastes something in his mouth, bitter and brackish and oddly compelling, oddly satisfying. His belly is stretched, heavy, with meat. He is in crinos still, his physical self clinging to the madness, to the savagery.

He loved and hated this creature. Pieces of it still remain all around him. Some of those pieces bear the marks of his teeth. There are scales stuck to his fur, particularly around his jaw. He has given it every answer so far, he has never held back, he has not lied, he has not pretended. He has been as brave and courageous as his will can bear -- and his will is great. He has been as truthful and honest as his mind can bear -- and he has a clarity of thought few Ahrouns can match. He has given it everything he can, every answer he knows, and one of those answers was his own rage. It is the last thing he had left.

Its head lies, torn off at the neck, a few feet from him. Rolled to one side, gleaming eyes still staring.

In the silence remaining, he hears

whyyy

Black Wind

A long time ago,

and very far away,

and almost in another lifetime:

he was a boy, and he went to school, and after school he walked home (sometimes with his sister, which was awful because she was a girl and embarrassing and pretended she knew everything) and sometimes he wouldn't do homework, he'd turn on the tv and pretend to be doing homework but he'd really be watching a show. A stupid cartoon, a child's diversion. There was a character in it, and she drove everyone to utter screeching insanity, because she only ever had one line: why? why? why? Everyone thought it was funny. It was supposed to be funny. Lukas never thought it was very funny, though. He was annoyed by the character, annoyed by those sketches, a little creeped out by them, and now he sees

he was right all along. It's not funny at all. It's creepy. It's scary. It's madness to be confronted with that question again and again, forced to delve into the roots of one's own motives, forced to see there's no such thing as a pure motive.

Why, the voice wants to know. And the trembling rage rises in him again, because god damn it, he just told it why, he spilled it all, there's nothing more, it's never enough, he's failing again.

"Because," there's an unsteadiness to his voice this time; a breaking, or a strain, or a quiver of wrath, "I made it wrong, so I have to make it right. If I don't, that's cowardice and irresponsibility and weakness, and I don't want to be weak. Who wants to be weak? Has anyone ever come here and told you they wanted to be weak? I doubt it. I don't want to be weak. Being weak is the easiest way to give in to --

"Being evil. Being bad. I don't want to be bad. A bad Garou, a bad man, any of that. It's there. The potential for evil and destruction and ... all the things I'm trying to prevent. It's always there. When I met my mate I told her I'd beat her if she lied to me. I told her if she did something that I felt like I should punish, I'd beat her, and it wouldn't even be because I lost my temper. I'd just do it. I said that to her, my mate. I thought that was strength, but that's ... twisted. There's so much rage in me. I try to control it. It's difficult. It's a struggle that I always have to be strong enough to bear. Sometimes I don't think I can, but -- I have to. Because if I don't walk the line, if I give in to my weakness, if I'm not careful, I'll fall. I'll fall very far.

"I don't want to fall. I don't want to be a monster. I want to be good, to protect the ones that rely on me, to do what's right. Because I have to. Because if I don't, then maybe no one will. Because I don't want the world to burn, I don't want my loved ones to suffer."

And the snake says:

why.

And that's when he loses control. That's when control slips out of his grasp, whips away from him he doesn't have a shred of hope of containing it. Containing himself. All that potential for destruction he spoke of an instant again explodes into reality. It is dim here, but he is black. Black, black, black as sin: with glittering icy eyes that see nothing but hatred, with flashing teeth that know nothing but violence.

He tears that snake apart, that huge, terrible, lovely thing. There's blood everywhere, scales on his tongue, vertebrae crunching between his teeth. It's not enough. He tears it apart and he eats it, devours it with mindless, thoughtless ferocity, eats and eats and gorges himself, grunting, whuffing, growling at the errant muscle-twitches of dying nerve impulses.

When he comes back to himself he thinks

for a moment

that maybe it's still alive. This thing he hated and loved; this thing that asked and asked and then pushed him to show it exactly what he meant. The eyes still stare. They never did blink. The tongue doesn't flicker, though. The back of the head is attached to nothing. It is ruined,

okay,

i love you,

byebye.

Wyrmbreaker retches. He vomits lukewarm masticated chunks of reptile; half-coagulated slimes of blood. He vomits until he's emptied out again, his stomach aching, his shivering withers contracting to shoulderblades, the fur receding to nudity. He is wearing his wife's ring and his own, and perhaps a few pieces of clothing that were bound to his spirit.

Why, asks the Sphinx. It was never the snake after all. He coughs thickly. And he answers; not a torrent of truth this time at all. Not paragraphs and paragraphs of exposition, explanation, peeling away the skins of his soul like a screaming bloody onion.

Just this:

"Because that's who I am. Because that's the only way I know how to be."

The Sphinx

whyyy

Again. Dead and devoured. And, rasping in his mind, more:

you

are

at

the beginning

The snake's tongue slips out, flutters in the air, and recedes.

you

are

new

It sounds like it is dying, but not dead. It sounds like it is straining for him, for his sake, for no reason. No reason at all. There is no more reason, no reasoning. Yet:

tell

me

why

why

why

why

Over and over again now, unbreaking, unyielding, relentless. Breaking him.

Black Wind

His hands clench. His nails dig into earth, or stone, or mist, or nothingness. He screams it:

"I DON'T KNOW WHY."

the courtyard.

Red Vengeance

So they do. Lukas walks through the pillars, Red a step behind him, and the last thing he hears is the munching of the lion's jaws around the sparrow's wings.

The mists do not vanish. But underneath, through their swirling, he can see a floor made of what looks like one expansive slab of marble. His feet brush through the wisps of fog as he walks forward. More pillars appear out of the distance, lining a courtyard upon which no sun or moon shines. Light comes from no apparent source. There are people here, reclining on cushions or leaning against pillars. They look human, though some of them are augmented: intricate, abstract tattoos across their faces, tinted skins, features altered to include lengthened ears or small horns on their brows. Some have unnaturally long nails. Many are naked, or clothed only in artfully arranged swaths of gauzy fabric. They look decadent, eating foods that smell familiar but look unrecognizable. Some play music on unfathomable instruments.

They look like a scene out of Rome, or some alien planet on Star Trek, or simply like a group of people with no boundaries to what they might decide to do to amuse themselves. Some distance away from where Lukas stands now, there is a low couch in front of another golden gate between two pillars. It has no animal worked into its design, however. Lying on the couch on her side is the creature Red Vengeance described to him. As exotic as she is, as inhuman as she has become, there is something about her that is captivatingly beautiful.

One thing is not: the black wolf lying on the ground beside her couch, his neck collared with silver, each limb wearing a cuff of the same. The silver is etched with arcane symbols. The wolf is gnawing on a haunch of what seems to be raw lamb, holding the bone down and tearing flesh from it. One of the being's delicate, clawed hands strokes through the fur on the top of his head.

No one looks up at him when he and Red enter. No one but that wolf, who stops suddenly, meat hanging from its mouth, and lifts his head. He doesn't pause. He doesn't hesitate. In new bodies, one of them housing two souls, he recognizes them. Or at least: he recognizes those eyes. Your eyes are the same.

Silver Warning drops the leg of lamb and barrels toward them suddenly, ears up, legs eating the ground until he leaps, tackling Lukas, licking his face though his mouth is full of lamb's blood, barking and whuffing and generally attacking him with adoration, relief, and gratitude.

Black Wind

[percep+PU: IZZIT REELLY YOU?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Red Vengeance

[yup!]

Black Wind

No manticores after all. No griffins. Nothing but the Sphinx herself, such as she is: this inhuman, eldritch creature lounging in the midst of the strangest interpretation of Greco-Roman decadence Lukas has ever seen.

Wrath hits him like a hammer when he sees the wolf there, chained in silver. Even before he recognizes Silver Warning, recognizes him unmistakably and deep in the marrow of his bones, he feels that pulse of anger. No Garou should be chained like that, like a pet, like a beast. Never. He is in his human shape, Lukas is, but a growl rumbles in his throat anyway. He starts forward forcefully --

-- only to be met suddenly, exuberantly by his long-lost brother. The collision drives a huff of air from his lungs. He puts his arms around the wolf, scuffs its head and its ears, hugs it tight until it squirms away to bound around his legs. That's when he drops to one knee, his hands on his brother's fur, touching him, the shape and smell and sound of him: the strangest sort of familiarity, a memory carried down through the centuries, through the lifetimes.

"What happened?" are the first words out of his mouth. "Why did she let us go, but keep you?"

Red Vengeance

No one stops Silver Warning. Not even the Sphinx, who glances up when Silver does, who watches as he jumps on Lukas. Red is suddenly there, too, clinging to them, throwing her arms around them both as much as she can. She's shaking. Silver Warning is shaking. Somewhere, deep asleep inside of her own body, Danicka's soul is trembling, too. They are together again. Hundreds of years after the last time, they're together.

In a heap on the ground, then. Lukas kneeling, Silver Warning licking Red now, too, recognizing her in the same way Lukas recognizes them both, recognized Danicka the first time he saw her. Red is almost hysterical, her face buried in Silver Warning's fur. He rubs his face against hers, trying to comfort her. She's carried this burden so long, and so alone. It feels over now -- though it isn't, really -- and she seems to go almost mad from relief, from an inability to believe it's true. Silver Warning keens a bit, letting her cling to him, while he looks up at Lukas.

He sniffs at him. He does not speak. Not as a wolf, not in his thoughts, not with anything but the body language of any normal, unchanging wolf. He makes a worried sound and paws at Lukas's knee.

Behind him, across the room, the Sphinx is rising from her couch to sit on it, her arms to either side, head dropped between her shoulders but staring straight ahead. Around the feet of the couch there is a stirring in the mist, following something too well-covered by fog to be seen clearly. She watches all this, until Lukas asks his question and finds that Silver Warning cannot answer him.

"His answer was unsatisfactory," she says, her voice tinted with a posh British accent, the syllables clipped neatly like roses being pruned.

Black Wind

For a moment they are naked. Their relief, their ache, their joy makes them so. They have no emotional skin left; it is all out in the open for the Sphinx to see.

The other people don't matter. Lukas understands that, even as he understand that the lion didn't matter, and the eagle-sparrow didn't matter. They are all constructs of this realm -- or perhaps prisoners of it. The axis to this world, the answer to its riddles, is the creature that binds them all here.

When she speaks, a cold sliver slides down Lukas's spine. He closes his emotions away, or tries to. He puts his hand on Red's shoulder, on Silver's withers; grips them firmly, tries to calm them. They cannot show weakness now, he thinks, and rises to his feet.

Faces the Sphinx. Thinks a moment.

"Is that why you took his voice as well?"

Red Vengeance

"I did not take it," she answers, her hands sliding across the velvet towards her thighs. With one motion she rises, close to six feet tall, and begins to walk in their direction. "He seems to have misplaced it."

The mists move around the floor, around her feet as she walks. Her steps are reminiscent of the lion's: slow, powerful, heavy. The thing that stirred the fog around her couch begins to reveal itself, following her. Its head lifts an inch or so from the ground. They are halfway across the mirage of a room and the length of its body still has not finished winding around the couch. It is miraculous how graceful a snake that large can be, how each foot of its complete length moves in concert with the rest. She walks; it glides.

Black Wind

In unconscious response, Lukas's spine straightens, a subtle tension winding from top to base. Wary but motionless, he watches the Sphinx approach. Briefly his eyes cut to the serpent, and then return to its mistress.

"I need to bring him Home." He is quiet; there's a strain of appeal there. And courtesy. And iron. "He's been here too long. Tell me what I must do to free him."

Red Vengeance

Her head tips to the side; that effervescently pale long hair of hers swings out past her shoulder like a curtain, swaying. She keeps walking toward them. As Lukas stands, Red seems to gather some of her composure, lifting her head from Silver Warning though she does not let go of him. She looks hatefully at the Sphinx, hands tightening in his fur as though she would very much like to tear this creature apart. For his part, Silver Warning just finally notices the snake and cranes his neck forward, sniffing at it. Not angrily. Not even warily. Like he wants to say hello.

"That is not an option," says the Sphinx, coming to a stop a few feet from them. "You were all quite clear on the rules before entering my chamber." Her hands, tipped with those catlike claws, fold in front of her, resting atop her robe. "We mustn't break the rules. The universe will descend into chaos."

Black Wind

A flash of anger goes through him. His totem is a storm. His totems are all storms: storms in the sky, storms in the water, storms in the heart. He controls it, as he always does, his eyes falling to Silver for a moment.

"No, we mustn't," he agrees. "But we have our own rules to follow. Don't leave your brother behind is one of them. We made a vow. We have to keep it."

A pause. And then, stressing the words this time:

"Tell me what I must do to free him."

Red Vengeance

Silver Warning is wagging his tail, but there's a trace of anxiety in it. He is so happy to see his friends. His best friends, who look different and smell different but feel different-and-the-same. He can't quite see or sense White Vision but he knows she must be there too, or nearby, and anyway it's okay, Red and Wind are his favorites anyway and they're here and Red is very angry and the snake is very interesting, hello snake!

Red Vengeance is growling at the Sphinx, snarling through her teeth, refusing to let go of her brother. It seems as though that embrace is the only thing keeping her from launching at the Sphinx.

That and one memory: she died the last time she did that. Quickly.

The Sphinx has no eyebrows to lift, and her expression remains impassive other than a slight flicker in her golden eyes. "Your rules do not matter here. This is my realm, and you all had the freedom to walk away." At her feet, the snake's tongue extends, tasting the air, fluttering a moment before it retracts. Its eyes glimmer like gemstones, watching the three wolves.

"However," she goes on, glancing at Red, who is growing claws, whose teeth are sharpening, "I will grant you this." She looks back to Lukas, Alpha in that life and in this: "You may all stay. The four of you can be together for all eternity if you like. I assure you, it will not be an unpleasant existence. You have my word."

Black Wind

"Not an unpleasant existence."

Lukas repeats the words softly, as though tasting them. What does poison taste like, he wonders. Sweet, some of it, or so the stories go. Like sleeping draughts. Potions meant to sedate, to calm, to break the will. He looks around: the exotic foods, the tempting wines. The strange men and women that wander between the columns and the arches. The animals that stalk the mist.

"To stay here. All four of us. An eternity together. No war. No pain. No need to separate again, ever. Drinking your wine, eating your food, amusing ourselves with your -- friends.

"Wearing your collars, and your chains. Kept as your pets. Unchanging, except to devolve and become mindless."

He raises his eyes to the Sphinx again. There's a furrow of a frown between his eyebrows. "Why are you doing this?" he asks. "When we first heard of you, lifetimes ago, it was said you were an oracle, a keeper of wisdom that could turn the tide. It's been centuries, maybe millennia, and nothing's changed. You're still living in your own world. Why? Why are you here?"

Red Vengeance

Nothing he says seems to perturb her. She doesn't deny any of it, either. In fact: the Sphinx nods. Yes. All four of them together. No war. No pain. No death. They will be fed and comforted and entertained. They can lay down their wills to collars and chains. They will belong to someone. They will, in time, forget the need to speak, to know names, to be anything but animals.

It even makes her smile, a little, tenderly.

Why, he asks her. That smile does not fade, but becomes indulgent. Red has shifted to crinos and is on all fours beside Silver Warning now, claws digging at the marble. The Sphinx glances at her. "Few find me here, wolf. It is my home in a way the earthly realm never was, or could be." One hand lifts, and waves dismissively. "I reward those who seek wisdom with a taste of it. What they do with that kernel is none of my concern. Rather than return home peacefully and use your wisdom to change the course of your history, two of you made me kill you. The third, I hear, went mad." She lifts both hands, shrugs. "I am here because I will it. I grant gifts to visitors because I will it, and if they adhere to my rules."

Her hands lower. "Why are you here? Don't tell me this nonsense about getting your brother back." She flicks her eyes at Red, or more specifically, the body Red is wearing, then sharply turns them back to Lukas. The snake hisses, long and sibilant. "We both know that's a fib."

Black Wind

There's something insidious about her retelling. It makes a skewed sort of sense. This is her home; she sets the rules. She offers gifts to those who follow the rules. She gave them gifts. They spat in her face, made her kill them. What rude, disrespectful, messy guests they have been.

"I'm here because I'm afraid I'll never see my mate again if I don't do this," Lukas replies. There isn't so much as a beat of pause. "That was the first reason, and maybe the strongest even now.

"I'm also here because I'm afraid even if she did come back to me, she'd hate me for not coming. For abandoning our brother. For being selfish. And I'm here because I'ved remembered Red Vengeance, and I can't let her carry the burden of memory alone, caught between lives, unable to go Home, while I indulge myself in life after life.

"I'm here because I made a promise I don't know how many lifetimes ago, and I meant to keep the promise.

"And I'm here," finally, "because this is my brother, and I remember him too, and I can't let you keep him. Not like this.

"Please. Let me take him Home."

Red Vengeance

Red looks at him. Swings her massive head around, looks at him when he says he's afraid he'll never see Danicka again. Once his sister, once many other things, now his mate. And his wife. Her ring sits on his little finger and not even all the way down on that. Red only knows these two lives of hers, so fragile in both of them. She wishes suddenly she could know this mate of his, talk to her, hold her, roll her eyes at the two half-moons again, hear her laugh. She feels Silver Warning at her side: anger and grief and guilt and longing all tear at her, pull her in multiple directions --

her head drops again, rubs against Silver Warning's. It is clear, in that one motion, that if she had to, she would stay. Even if it meant keeping Danicka asleep forever, even if it meant trading this body back and forth between their souls, even if it meant living with the remnants of this pain for eternity: she would stay. She is so tired. She has been so alone.

And Silver Warning has gone mute. Regressed to little more than an infant or a cub inside his own mind, so happy still to see his packmates that he just wags his tail and listens to Lukas's voice, feels Red next to him, and is content.

Lukas is on his own.

The Sphinx regards him for some time, silent. She turns her head and looks over her shoulder at the gate behind her couch, then back to Lukas. "You may enter my chamber again," she says. "You may be tested again. If your answer is unsatisfactory, you will all remain. However, if it satisfies, then you may all leave." She pauses a moment, and her tone arches: "I hope you appreciate that this is highly unusual."

Black Wind

Lukas wonders how deep the Sphinx sees. How far her vision reaches. He wonders if she merely hears truth the way Philodoxes do, or if she sees it inside him before he ever voices it.

It took truth to pass the gate of the eagle. It takes truth now, he has no doubt, to win even this thin sliver of a chance. He wonders if she saw the deeper truth behind the words, though: that he was pressed against an edge, backed against a cliff. His heel was slipping even as he spoke that last entreaty: please. He was thinking about last-ditch options. He was thinking about Red Vengeance saying:

we have to get him out. we have to kill him.

and he was thinking that if he couldn't get Silver out, if he couldn't save him from this realm and say a proper goodbye -- then he could at least free him. Maybe. He could kill his brother, and then resign himself to whatever fate awaited him.

That's not how it goes, though. There's a chance. It's a sliver, paper-thin, but it's a chance. Something in the tense line of Lukas's back relaxes ever so slightly. Highly unusual, the Sphinx calls it, and he huffs a wan laugh.

"I do," he says. "I do appreciate it."

He wants to say something to his packmates. He wants to say something to his mate. He doesn't, though. His hand falls solidly on Silver Warning's head for a moment. He looks at Red Vengeance. Then he passes them, steps forward, follows wherever the Sphinx might lead.

Red Vengeance

[PAUSE]

the eagle gate.

Black Wind

A lion. An eagle. A sphinx. Lukas believes Red Vengeance when she postulates that the creator of this realm was once a human will-worker. These are constructs of human myth; fantastic creatures that held prominence in the symbolism of many cultures. He wonders what else awaits them. Manticores? Dragons? Griffins?

Alpha, she calls him. He looks at her, a quick turn of his head, a quick furrow of his brow. Something in him aches. I am not your Alpha, he wants to say. You do not belong here anymore, and I will miss you when you are gone.

The pain is sharper, there at the end. He turns away again to face the eagle gate. His hand flexes against hers. Then he murmurs: "Let's do as we did once, then. Grip the talons."

-- and so he does.

Red Vengeance

[Important questions! The difference between 'think' and 'feel' matters, too!

1. What is at the forefront of Lukas's mind when he takes the talon?

2. What does he think about himself in the midst of that act?

3. Why is he here (in this place specifically, not like 'in the universe')?

4. How does he feel about Red standing beside him?]

Black Wind

[1. Apprehension, determination. He's not sure exactly what's going to happen here. He wants to get through this; he wants to finish what he started lifetimes ago; he wants, most of all, to get Danicka back.

2. Nothing very specific. A certain level of self-sacrifice: if pain and blood is what it takes to get through, so be it.

3. He wants to get Danicka back. More than anything else, this is what drives him right now. He 'knows' he has a certain responsibility to finish what his past life started, and he even wants to do that -- but getting his mate back is a huge, preoccupying impetus at the moment.

4. Mixed. Some part of him feels indebted to her and guilty. After all, he's gone on to live who knows how many other lives, finding his soulmate more often than not (he presumes), while she's just WAITED FOR HIM. FOR EONS. Another part feel very bad for her -- not just because of the waiting, but because as the end of all this she's going to forget it ever happened and just be reborn. And some part of him still can't help but resent that she's just taken over his mate's body like this, no matter what she says about past lives and oaths taken. He's pretty sure in THIS life, she doesn't exactly have Danicka's consent.]

Red Vengeance

She forgets he isn't a Philodox anymore. Jumps when he steps forward to reach for the eagle's talon, moving faster to take the eagle's grip at the same time he does. Their fingers lace with cool gold, thick bars of it that end in artistic renderings of claws. They do not stay artistic very long. They do not stay renderings for long. As promised, the gold begins to creak, begins to curl forward. The tips of those claws -- thankfully made of gold and not of silver -- tap against the backs of their hands.

Red says what he thought earlier, muttered under her breath: "This is going to hurt."

At their widest, the eagle's talons have the diameter of silver dollars. 'Hurt' is putting it mildly. As the individual feathers begin to shudder and peel outward from the frame of the gate, as the two-dimensional eagle's beak begins to turn outward and open in a shriek, those talons dig suddenly and sharply into -- then through -- Lukas's hand. Shred it open. Without a few connective tissues in between the claws, without the claws themselves, his hand would be so many disconnected pieces danging from a stump.

Red is shifting her arm to try and compensate, biting back howls of pain, but not for long. They turn to shrieks. Screams.

In Danicka's voice. Danicka's voice. Not Red-in-Danicka's. Danicka.

"Lukáš!" she starts crying, still holding his hand though she is crumpling, her body no longer supporting its own weight, held up by where the eagle grips her and where she still grips his hand. While she. Screams. His name.

Black Wind

[I DON'T CARE IF THE MOON IS PRACTICALLY NEW.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Black Wind

Lukas doesn't even try to hold back. He bellows as the talons clench -- first through clenched teeth, and then open-throated, open-lunged roars of agony. Some detached part of him sees the damage, marvels at the surgical cleanness of the destruction, and then --

and then Danicka starts screaming.

He is not a Philodox anymore. Even the Philodox he would might have been driven beyond the brink by this. The Ahroun he is now, with that savage beast of Rage always so tenuously and carefully reigned in his breast, quite simply

loses his shit.

He's suddenly half again as tall. There's black fur bursting through the seams of his splitting clothing. That delicate gold chain he wore around his neck bursts asunder; his wife's wedding ring pings off somewhere. He has claws of his own now. He has hot flesh and thick blood, and both are pouring around those talons, his body trying to reknit itself even as he lets go his mate's hand, grasps the eagle by its feathered throat. Ears pinned, eyes glaring, his jaws unhinge and he blasts a raw roar in the eagle's face. Tries to tear it off the gate. Tries to rip that offending taloned claw off like a drumstick off a chicken.

Red Vengeance

Danicka's hand is not healing. It is, however, trying to. She is screaming with her own voice, screaming his name and then wordless shrieks of pain, but that hand of hers is trying desperately to grow fur, to heal, to withstand the damage that Red knew she could take. He lets her go as she's changing, and Danicka -- terrified of this form he takes in a way she is scared of nothing else on earth -- doesn't even seem to notice. She goes to the ground as he goes after the eagle.

It meets him. Is pulling its wings out, growing from two dimensions into three, made of gold that feels like steel. It shrieks right back to his roar.

Danicka's body hits the ground, her right hand a grisly, twitching mess. She is still conscious, eyes rolling back and moaning. Not that he can hear it. The eagle is free of its pillars, came free just as he was letting go of Danicka's hand and yanking his own hand out of its talon, but it doesn't shrink. It doesn't turn into a sparrow. Its talons come toward his chest, ready to open him up.

Red Vengeance

[correction: lukas's hand is still caught with the talon]

Black Wind

There is no time to think. He can't think anyway -- his mind is a roar, empty and furious. The talons reach for his heart. He reacts: not by throwing the eagle back, not by biting at its head, but by

intercepting that grasping talon with his own handpaw: both his hands caught in its pitiless grip now.

Red Vengeance

To one side, Lukas may -- or may not, given what he's facing -- be aware of what happens to Danicka then. Her right hand is elongated from those enormous wounds, blood leeching out of her only to vanish in the mists beneath them. But curled on her side, her form melts. The clothes he found for her, to keep her warm, to keep her protected when he didn't know that Red Vengeance could shift from within her, do not so much tear or shred off of her as simply vanish. In moments she is a small, black-furred wolf, and her right forepaw is slowly knitting itself back together, the tide of blood stemming, the breathing of the limp figure returning to normal.

Hard to see, with bars of gold shaped like wings beating all around him, shrieking in midair. Hard to notice, as instead of letting the eagle cut open his chest and expose his heart, Lukas grabs its other talon. As with the first, it digs in instantly. Those talons still stained with Danicka's blood dig into his palm and the back of his hand, splitting his handpaws with enormous holes.

He sees into -- and through -- the sculpted eyes of the golden eagle. And he remembers the last time he was here.

He and Silver Warning never really got along. They were rivals from the day they met, both living under the roof of the same mentor, Ice Cloud. Silver Warning -- though he was not called that yet -- was so much softer, so much more malleable. He did things for their mentor's approval, not because they were right. He put up with the greatest fools among the other cubs, laughed at the stupidest stories. No one seemed to see his weakness or care for it. He made them weaker in that way.

Even Ice Cloud told Black Wind to try and be more like Silver Warning. Reach out to the other cubs, who might one day be his packmates. He told him not to be so cold, so isolated. Resentment closed his ears. Everyone preferred Silver Warning: so be it. And no matter, either. In the end, the truth would win out and the battle would need to be led -- and won. It wouldn't matter then who was most liked.

They went through their Rite of Passage together. Red Vengeance was with them, hot-tempered and wild. She disliked Silver Warning, too. Nearly bit his head off -- quite literally -- the first time he tried to command her. She was trying to lead the whole mess. It didn't work very well: their first task involved a spirit that none of them could talk to. It didn't respond to Black Wind's intimidation and shied from Red Vengeance's wrath. Silver Warning pantomimed to it, prostrated himself to it, and won it over.

He said something to Red Vengeance then, when she mocked him for submitting to a small, weak spirit, and it caught Black Wind's ear. He'd never heard that sharpness in his almost-brother's voice before. He'd never heard Silver Warning say anything like that: I am willing to do what it takes for the good of us all, even if it is my own glory that must be laid down. Even if I am thought a fool, even if no songs are sung of my name when I die. Can you say the same?

Red Vengeance was calmer after that. She took his words to heart. When they spoke, she listened. When a threat came to them, she did not lunge at it with no mind for the two half-moons but stepped in front of them to take the brunt of the attack. And Black Wind replayed those words in his mind over and over as they went on.

The riddle of the bridge -- what boards to step on, which to avoid, the counting game and the symbols that had to be deciphered -- was where both of them realized that Black Wind's silence and stoicism were not stupidity, though perhaps a bit of snobbery. He was not clever in the agile, friendly way that Silver Warning was but methodical. He would not take a step -- or allow them to take a step -- until he was certain he was right. And when it came down to it, when he was not completely sure, he risked his own life rather than let either of them face potential failure or death on his word.

By the end of the rite, their leader had emerged. Red Vengeance made him take risks. Silver Warning made him connected. And he made both of them safe, made both of them wise. They were brothers and sister after that. It was years before they adopted White Vision into their pack, the sin-born, often-blind, half-mad Theurge who loped alongside them on three well-formed hind legs compensating for the withered, shortened arm she had been born with. Red resisted that decision. Silver Warning was wary. Black Wind blew up at them for their judgement. Hadn't they despised one another at first? Hadn't they refused to see each other's strengths when they were young? He called them on their faults, their pride, and

when White Vision overheard the tail end of his rant, she laughed. All say you proud as Fang. Say Warning gentle-heart one, Red loud-voice one. You loud voice, gentle heart, humble as earth. Will not tell. None listen what I tell! And laughed and laughed, a wheezy and hiccuping sound in lupus, as she licked his hand. It made him feel simultaneously three inches tall and warmer than he'd ever been in his life. She never did tell, though. Spoke in riddles if she had to, but nothing ever said to or around White Vision was ever repeated outside of the pack.

Ranks later, years later, battlescars later, he and Silver Warning were still arguing. They argued about the nature of justice and whether it was more important than the law. They debated the litany for hours at a time, never quite playing the Ragabash to each other, but sometimes coming quite close. Black Wind never named a Beta among his pack, for each of them was necessary to him in some vital way, but Red and Vision both knew whose word he listened most closely to. If Warning ever questioned his judgement, it gave him pause in a way a word from Red or Vision never quite did. Warning knew him best. Warning had been his brother since they were ...god. Eight, by human counting? Maybe younger. And though they got into fights that sometimes left blood staining the dirt, for all their disagreements and differences, he trusted Silver Warning to keep him from becoming a monster.

When Red died because she could not help but try to save their brother, Black Wind was calling at her to stop, STOP! She died in a flash, died with her flesh crawling with silver. He was biting White Vision's hind legs as she ran ahead of him, snapping at her to run. His soul was sick. He felt like he would like to spit his own heart out rather than feel it breaking. Red a lump of dead flesh behind him, Silver Warning abandoned. When he died and rage took him, lifted him up and made him fight again, some part of him was grateful. When his spirit departed his body, he thought:

at least I don't have to live without them very long.

at least one of them will live a little longer.

But he couldn't abandon her in the homelands. Red's soul howled at a moon larger than a house in the ever-storming sky. Grief was twisting her spirit into something unrecognizable. He couldn't leave her like that. Not alone. So he stayed. He waited with her, made her chase spirit-prey with him, made her commune with the storm. But her most recent life had been an Ahroun, just as his most recent life had been an Alpha; she could not bear being the first to die, and to have not managed to save anyone.

Vision, he told her, licking at her ear in lupus, trying to comfort his sister. Vision lived. She did.

For a while. It was not very long before their sister's spirit joined them. And they made their oaths. Black Wind resisted: they should follow nature. They should let themselves be reborn. But with both of them in agreement, both of them demanding... his own guilt, his own grief, did not let him say no. Maybe his greatest failure as an Alpha, in all that time, was not telling them no. His spirit was tired. He had fought the natural cycle too long already. So he oathed.

One of them would stay, to remember the path. White Vision volunteered. Red refused: she did not want to forget. And White Vision had already lived a brutal enough life. She had earned a fresh start, a new body, an unfettered heart. All she asked was that Vision and Wind find each other. If you find each other, she believed, you will come back and find me again. You will. Then we will all find our brother, and all of us will be free.

That is the last memory he has as Black Wind. White Vision's suffering finally coming to an end. Red Vengeance's desperately optimistic faith. And for the first time since he was a child, Silver Warning's voice too far away to be heard.

His hands are pain. There's no sense of flesh or bone or reality at the ends of his wrists: only pain, turning his vision into a brilliant haze. The eagle clutches his hands as its wings

slowly

stop

beating.

It hangs in the air, seemingly lifeless, until a voice speaks from, apparently, the gold itself:

WHERE IS YOUR PACK

Black Wind

Lukas,

Wyrmbreaker, Cold Victory, Black Wind,

does not know how to answer that. His memory is split right down the middle. Two lifetimes echo suddenly in his mind. He remembers it in an incapacitating flash, who he was superimposed on who he is. The pack that was and the pack that is. The people they were; the man he is now. The way he knew them then. The way he knows only one of them now, because the other two were lost, are lost, have been gone from him so long that he forgot how much his spirit needed them.

WHERE IS YOUR PACK, thunders the voice of metal itself: like glory and poison, the essence of gold. His world is pain, and not merely because his hands are shredded apart. He is an Ahroun in this lifetime. He's felt so much worse than this. He was an Alpha that lost his pack in a previous lifetime, and that was so much worse than the ruin of his hands: that was a pain livid and alive, and it seizes him now as violently as it had the first time, because once again it was new to his experience. The question is demanded of him, and he answers from the unthinking core of his being:

"My pack cannot stand with me here!"

It is the only intersection of truth. He and Silver Warning argued about that once, lifetimes ago. What did the eagle seek, unity or the truth? He hopes Silver was right after all:

"I stand for my pack!"

Red Vengeance

The eagle, motionless in midair now, does not alter.

WHERE IS YOUR PACK

Black Wind

His teeth bare. He grips the talons, shakes the eagles with sheer frustration, succeeds only in shredding the fine meat between his metacarpals.

"Chicago," he spits the word out. "San Diego. Here beside me. Slumbering in her own body. Trapped by your mistress."

Red Vengeance

There is no sense that he has given the right answer, the wrong answer, that the eagle is pleased or displeased, that it is threatening him or granting him mercy. Only, again:

WHERE IS YOUR PACK

Black Wind

He twists his head to the side. His hackles are up; the tendons in his neck are obscured, but they stand out like steel cables. He spits a noise to the side, somewhere between snarl and curse.

Then a roar:

"Red Vengeance! Get up! UP."

Red Vengeance

The wolf at his side is twitching, trying to respond, but hardly moving. The foreleg is healed, healing, but it moves to press down against -- nothingness, really -- to begin pushing up. The eagle is not distracted:

WHERE IS YOUR PACK

Black Wind

"SHUT UP," he snaps at the eagle, genuine irritation overlying rage and frustration and pain and all the other reasons he has to be shouting. He twists around again: "Red Vengeance, get up, NOW."

And when she's beside him -- a short, sharp breath, almost a gasp, and then:

"Give it your hand." He can't bear to watch. "Let me -- here -- ahh, fuck! -- take it. Take its talons; that's it. That's my mate's hand, you fuck; she's here, my pack is here, are you satisfied? My pack is here."

Red Vengeance

Red Vengeance moves as though drugged. It is not unlike seeing the way Danicka first transformed, jittery and pained, pieces of her body moving without being strictly connected to each other. But she is moving, fighting to her feet, shapeshifting up from lupus into hispo into crinos.

Take it. Take its talons. Red is willing. The eagle is not. It is focused entirely on Lukas, digging its talons in all the harder. Red snarls, gripping the bars of its legs, trying to pull them off of Lukas. It hurts like a bitch.

WHERE IS YOUR PACK

Black Wind

" -- stop!"

It's not the first time he's told Red Vengeance to stop. The last time he told her, she didn't, and the thing that lives behind the lion gate and the eagle gate and who knows what other gates killed her, covered her in silver and seared her to nothing.

"Stop. That's not it; stop." Pain makes it hard to concentrate. He gathers his will; for the first time, he exerts his mind, presses down on the pain, forces it back, finds his center.

"My pack," he tries again, steady now through gritted teeth, "is here with me. My pack is always with me. In my mind, in my spirit. With me."

Black Wind

[DLP.]

Black Wind

" -- stop!"

It's not the first time he's told Red Vengeance to stop. The last time he told her, she didn't, and the thing that lives behind the lion gate and the eagle gate and who knows what other gates killed her, covered her in silver and seared her to nothing.

"Stop. That's not it; stop." Pain makes it hard to concentrate. He gathers his will; for the first time, he exerts his mind, presses down on the pain, forces it back, finds his center.

"My pack," he tries again, steady now through gritted teeth, "is in Chicago, where Truth's Meridian lives. My pack is in San Diego, where Brutal Revelation lives. My pack is here beside me, because Red Vengeance is with me again. My pack is sleeping in her own body, because White Vision was reborn as my mate. My pack is New York City and Los Angeles and Prague and Stark Falls. My pack is in the Homelands, waiting to be born. My pack is trapped behind your gate.

"And my pack is here with me. I carry them with me, always. The ones I love, the ones I trust, the ones I protect, the ones that protect me." His crystalline eyes search the mist a moment, then rise to meet the eagle's. "That's where my pack is."

Red Vengeance

Red stops. She maintains her grip on the eagle, with the renewed hand that she came out of some sort of physical-spiritual unconsciousness to heal for Danicka, but she stops pulling. They might take Lukas's hands completely off if they fight too hard with the eagle. Red is watching him with eyes that would be Danicka's if Danicka were a wolf: searing green, venomous, full of rage.

She stays next to him. The way Danicka might stay. The way Sinclair or Kate would stay. She watches him and not the eagle. He is, after all, her Alpha. And she waited for centuries for him to find her again. To do exactly this.

His pack is in many places. And some of them are waiting to be born.

The eagle does not ask him that question again. It does not release his hands, either. Red Vengeance is almost holding her breath. The wings of the eagle give a long, slow beat. Then grow smaller, glowing slightly as they go. Within moments it has become the size of a regular eagle, its feathers filling in with light and then with fine hairs, its eyes coalescing into amber orbs, the talons growing warm even where they pierce his hands. It keeps growing smaller, and Red exhales in relief, releasing it when it becomes too small to hold. It seems to cling to Lukas last of all, though, even as it shrinks to the size of a --

sparrow. In the end, he's holding a small, living bird in his hands, which are beginning to heal now that the talons are not holding the wounds open. Wings beat furiously at the palms of his handpaws.

"Not kill," Red snarls, her jaw malformed by her crinos shape. She begins to shift down again, to homid, even though it leaves her naked. Danicka's right hand and arm are bloodstained still, smattered with the last remnant of the wounds she took. The sparrow, if freed from Lukas's hands, flaps over to the lion, bobbing in midair. The lion glances up, lazily,

and

smashes it to the ground with his paw, holds it there, and begins to eat.

Red stares as this happens. Before them stand two pillars with nothing between them; only mist. Fragile, hollow bones crack and snap as the lion devours its snack. Red exhales and looks at Lukas again. "Was it truth or unity?"

Black Wind

As the eagle shrinks, so too does his rage, his pain. Red haze dissipates from the edges of his vision. In the end he holds a living sparrow in his hand; an amorphous sorrow in his heart that he can't quiet explain.

"No," he echoes quietly, "not kill."

He opens his hands. The sparrow flies away. What happens next makes Wyrmbreaker bare his teeth and snarl, but he does nothing to stop it. His shoulders lift and fall, and then stoop; he falls to all fours. While the lion feeds, the Ahroun puts nose to ground and sniffs, hunts, looks for the ring that pinged off into the mist when he burst into this form.

There's a brief pause as Red asks her question. His head lifts, swings around on that thick, muscular neck. He whuffs.

"Both."

Black Wind

[note to self:

lukas totally freaked out on instinct when danicka seemed to be hurt, but in the end he was willing to let the sparrow go because -- as he saw it -- the responsibility ultimately falls to him. the answer it sought was a truth in his heart; the reason it took so long and hurt both him and his mate's body was because HE didn't get to the core of it himself fast enough.]

Black Wind

[another note to self!

i think i caught on pretty quickly that this gate was seeking a more philosophical answer -- almost an acknowledgment of who was in his pack. but it took me a DAMNED LONG TIME to expand 'pack' beyond just the garou.]

Red Vengeance

Red Vengeance was not in control of Danicka's body when that ring went missing. Red Vengeance looks haunted as she stands there now, wearing that body in a way he has never seen it before. Or else: seen it only at the worst times, the hardest moments. He was not there when she was shot, but he could smell her blood all over her when Evan brought her to the Brotherhood after. He was out of his mind when they were attacked on the street, but when he came back to his own body he could see how injured she was, did not know if he had been the one to do it, knew it couldn't have been him because if it had been him she would have been dead.

She looks exhausted now, those green eyes dark ringed, following him as he searches. The lion ignores them. The pillars wait. His answer makes a pained smile tighten her mouth for a moment. She nods. It makes sense. Of course they were both right. It was usually so.

Walking after him, apparently satisfied to wait a few moments before they go on, she asks: "What are you looking for?"

Black Wind

"My mate's ring."

The answers are short. Perhaps terse. Perhaps Red Vengeance thinks he's angry at her; what a bad job she's done of protecting Danicka's body. That's not it, though. He feels the pressure of time. Ironic, since it's been centuries -- but the pressure doesn't come from how long Silver Warning has waited, but from how long Lukas himself took to find the right answer.

He'll tell her, later, after they pass through those pillars and before they come to their next task. He'll tell her what the eagle said, and how impassively, implacably it asked the same question. Over and over and over until he saw the key, which was truth and unity: which was the truth of unity. Where is your pack. Not merely the Garou bound to him now, but the Garou that were once bound, the Garou who would be bound to him, the kin, his family, his blood, his loved ones. And not merely where they are, but where he keeps them. How close he holds them in his mind. How dear.

All of it. Unity; truth. That's what the eagle sought. And he'll tell her all this, just in case --

just in case they fail. Just in case she has to wait again, another endless round of reincarnations until the pack is together again, close to the gateway, ready to free their brother and fulfill their oath.

For now, though, Lukas is quite preoccupied. He's looking for the ring. It's a tiny, almost ridiculous detail to care about right now.

Red Vengeance

Maybe she thinks he's angry at her. It wouldn't be the first time. Just the first time in multiple lifetimes. He tells her what he's looking for, and she remembers that thing, that small thing he asked her to take off. It made sense to her: she never married. She won't tell him this, it doesn't matter, but he left a widow last time. She remembers how tender he was with her, how no one but his pack would ever have guessed he was anything but a brute or a monster with his kinfolk. But they knew: how soft he was, how careful. How sometimes he was afraid to touch her, in case he might break her. She was, after all, a fragile thing, submissive and obedient. She had been lucky to have been won by him.

Dropping to her hands and knees as well, Red Vengeance begins to help him search. And in the end, Lukas is the one who finds it: right in front of the gate, sitting between the pillars. But as they look, Red does talk to him:

"I think that is why it struck me down," she says. "Truth and unity. I am two souls in one body." She is quiet a few moments. "I am sorry, brother. I did not think of it. I do not know why she woke up. I was not expecting it. She said she would sleep, and I promised to watch over her."

Black Wind

"I don't understand," Lukas says as he is rising, shifting down into his human form to cram Danicka's ring onto his little finger. It goes down as far as the proximal interphalangeal joint; no further. He frowns at it. He'll have to dedicate it, he thinks, and wonders if he has time.

To Red, then: "Why would being two souls in one body make it strike you down? I don't think you could have predicted it. It wasn't your fault."

A pause. And then, "You ... spoke to her?"

Red Vengeance

Red looks over at him when he stops moving, and sees that he's found the ring. He's putting her ring on. He's clothed, the items dedicated. She walks over, up off her hands and knees, and watches him try to cram the ring on. Her brows tug together. It's so like Danicka's frowns. It hurts to look at her.

"We are not one," she tells him, in answer to that first question. But he tells her it wasn't her fault. She doesn't answer that part. She just glances through the pillars, the mists they haven't approached yet. Looks back to him, meeting his eyes, as he asks her what he does. That tug of her brows turns into an actual frown, as she nods: "Of course. Before I came. I could not be here if she denied me."

There's a beat. "I could be," she corrects. "But I would not do that to my sister. I would wait another generation, or ten, rather than subjugate White Vision so." Red exhales. "She should not have woken. I cannot keep her body safe if she wakes."

Black Wind

It hurts, too, to hear what she says. Lukas takes a breath and lets it out, lowering his hand to his side. "I know," he says. "I'm sorry I ... "

He doesn't quite know how to finish that sentence. Mistrusted you, he could say. Thought poorly of you. Hated you for taking my mate away. Made you wait so long. He says none of in. He reaches out, embraces Red Vengeance roughly, powerfully. It is nothing like the way he holds Danicka.

"I'm sorry," he says, and leaves it at that.

Red Vengeance

It would be comic if Red Vengeance stiffened awkwardly, flailed her arms, didn't quite know how to take this. But this is the creature who tried to embrace him the moment she first could. She had not seen him in hundreds of years. He was her brother. They've saved each other's lives countless times. She never asked herself if she knew him in other lives. All of her own, she simply felt that it was true.

When Lukas reaches for her, Red Vengeance is there. She hugs him back, too. It is nothing like the way Danicka holds him. It is tight, though, and firm, and even possible for a moment or two to forget that these are Danicka's breasts pressed against him and Danicka's body hot to the touch where sometimes it is cooler by several degrees from his own. Except for sometimes.

Red Vengeance steps back, her hands on his arms, but holding him there. "We need to go on," she says.

Black Wind

To that Lukas nods. She's right. They need to go on. And so he does, passing the lion and the pillars, his footsteps stirring the mist. He's not sure where he's heading. This time, though, he leads, certain that wherever he needs to go will find him.