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 WindNo 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 VengeanceNo 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 WindFor 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 WindIn 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 VengeanceHer 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 WindA 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 VengeanceSilver 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 VengeanceNothing 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 WindThere'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 VengeanceRed 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 WindLukas 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]
