another loss.

[marcus]
Marcus sat with Sampson's body inside the hanger on the physical side of the sept. He was still covered in blood, his shirt ripped, torn from the blow of the axe he'd taken to his abdomen, his jeans rust colored as if they'd been dyed to look that way when he bought them.

Sampson laid on the concrete, his eyes closed, hands folding across his chest. Marcus had found an old tarp to cover his lower body so he couldn't see the ripped flesh that hadn't been healed. Sampson's face was pale, ashy, and cold.

Marcus stared at him, his face one of disbelief, and shock. Anger, grief, and even Rage would come later. He did not think of the man that attacked them, that image of a thing of a man that was now forever etched into his mind. He did not think about what he was going to say to Strider's wives and children. How he was going to tell them their father was never coming home.

No his mind only focused on the last words Sampson had said to him, and said to anyone in the physical world. A voice full of laughter and mirth, that at times could equally be one of indignation and scorn, but also righteous and honorable. Truly from the time Marcus had known him he'd liked him. He couldn't say that about many people. Sure he tolerated people, was understanding, even intensely disliked a few, but it was rare for him to naturally like someone, especially a man who was so different, but yet the same in so many ways.

So Marcus sat there numb now, he'd cried all his tears out, there were no more. He sat there waiting for the rest of his pack.

They would've felt the bond slip, would've heard Sampson's last cry for help over the totem phone, and then later they would hear Marcus's stunned voice speaking a simple harsh truth of a cold indifferent world.

"Please Come to the Caern. Sampson has died in battle."

[kate]
There is silence for a long moment across the totemlink, perhaps the reeling of shock from the surviving members of the Unbroken Circle before Katherine's voice sounds, clear as a bell in Marcus' numb thoughts. She sounds grim, even without looking upon her features.

I am on my way, what happened?

[lukas]
The hangar door opens with a creak of rusted metal.

Silent, Lukas approaches his two packmates: one alive, the other dead. He comes swiftly to their side, dropping to one knee. For a moment he looks at Sampson - whatever's on his mind, whatever grief, whatever memories, are hidden and unseen behind his eyes. A shadow crosses his brow, and that's all.

He reaches out, though. Puts his hand on Sampson's smooth brow. The chill of the body startles him, makes a jolt of reaction run up his arm, but he doesn't draw back. He lays his hand there for a moment, and then draws a slow breath.

"Goddammit, Sampson."

And then he sits back on his heel, looking across at Marcus for the first time.

"What happened?"

[kate]
The Silver Fang arrives at some point soon after the Shadow Lord and drifts to the side of her pack mates, alive and dead. There is some comprehension in both her gaze and her expression that suggests she is feeling both the loss of another piece of the Circle and the unsettling comprehension that with Sampson's death and her brother's departure -- only herself and Lukas remain of those who first came together, who first wished to guide and increase the strength of Gaia in these last decaying years.

She stands behind Marcus and Lukas, looking down upon the still body.

It did not seem natural for the Strider to ever be so still, so vulnerable and pale.

[marcus]
Marcus doesn't look up at Lukas's approach, or Katherine's. He is breathing is low, long unconsciously performing the technique from the Breath of Gaia rite, but not the full rite itself in order to remain somewhat focused, to keep from breaking down again, the shock still not worn off.

His voice is hoarse, and raw when he speaks. "We were walking. Just a ways from here. Not far. A man. My height. A Fomor I think. Scarred face, carrying an axe. He attacked a woman. She came running from an alley."

His brow furrows and his face frowns as he remembers her scared face, her gasping, ragged breaths.

"He'd hit her in the chest. The lung had been penetrated. The hole was too big for my license cover."

He swallows and takes a moment to steady himself. "Then he was on us. I tried to grab the axe, get his weapon away from him or slow him so Sampson could take him."

He doesn't say anything for a few moments. "He pulled away and reversed his attack, and I felt the pain, briefly. In my stomach. And then... The next thing I saw was Charlie standing over me. How long? Could it have been more the moment?" He says really still not sure how Charlie appeared so quickly, thinking it was seconds not minutes, precious minutes in a life or death situation, that had taken the Theurge to arrive.

"And then... over next to me." He doesn't say anything more but simply points to Sampson. It's still hard for him to say the words that he is indeed gone when he doesn't have to.

[lukas]
Lukas betrays little reaction to any of this; simply a flicker of his eyelids here and there, a stitch in his brow.

When Marcus finishes, there's a pause.

Then, "Okay. Is the fomor dead?"

[marcus]
Marcus looks over at Lukas, and frowns. His answer is simple, even if his voice is low from shock.

"No. I think he still lives."

[lukas]
Lukas's hand mops absently over his face, fingers and thumb splaying across his jaw. He looks at Sampson for a moment, then returns his eyes to Marcus.

"Okay," again.

He gets to his feet; his body language says he's ready to go. Last time a packmate died, Lukas had wanted twenty hours to prepare. He had needed at least half an hour. This time, he doesn't need any time at all.

Experience comes as much from defeat as it does from victory. As much from loss as from gain.

"I have sufficient talens for the pack. Do either of you need additional time to prepare?"

[kate]
Katherine's pale blue eyes narrowed marginally at the revelation the Fomori still breathed where Sampson did not. Lukas gets to his feet and says okay as though not certain if it were or not and the blond Silver Fang reaches over to take his hand without comment, to briefly squeeze it as if to communicate many things without more than the steadiness of her gaze. Or perhaps this was her intent all along, to press into his flesh her presence.

Did she need time to prepare?

"Non," she replied, letting go now his hand. "I wish to spill the fiend's blood."

[marcus]
Marcus look over at Lukas. His face is expressionless. He pulls up the tarp to cover Sampson. He stands up and simply nods to Lukas signaling his intent to go with Katherine and Lukas.

[lukas]
"Then let's go." Lukas bends to tuck a corner of the tarp carefully beneath Sampson's shoulder. "Marcus is leading the way. He can brief us on what he knows en route. We'll start tracking from the site of the battle. Ask Caleb to meet us there.

"We'll bring Sampson back to his family when we can tell them his killer is dead."

--

[marcus]
Marcus was dressed in his collared flannel plaid shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, crisp blue jeans, and polished jungle boots.

He'd asked Lukas if he could be the one to inform Sampson's family of his death. All but insisted in his own way to be more precise. He was there when Sampson died, and to Marcus he should be the one to tell his family. If they wanted to place blame then it would be on Marcus's shoulders. No one else. That day Two Ravens' strength had broken, and Sampson had died. Or at least that's how Marcus saw things.

He approached the door to the home of Sampson's family and stared at it for almost a full minute. He'd rehearsed his speech a couple of dozen times, but it didn't help right now. Finally after a deep breath he reached out and knocked on the door three times.

[sampson's wives]
The woman who answers the door is no older than Sampson was, nineteen and full of life and beautiful. Her breeding speaks to Marcus, exotic, from lands very very foreign to the Fenrir philodox. A Nandi tribeswoman as well, a marathon runner, a professional athelete, she is as long of leg at Skinny Legs, but with far more attractive features. She knows him, barely, this First Wife who carries herself with a graceful inner dignity.

Marcus. If he was here to see Sampson, the Strider would have bounded out already, that invisible, silent connection between packmates arranging their meeting.
Sampson isn't here, and Marcus should surely know this.

Chepleting Musembi stares at the warrior with at first puzzlement, then a dawning horror as her heart freezes in her chest. "Where is my Sampson, packmate of my mate?"

She makes no other gesture, stiff and solid in place.

[marcus]
Marcus slowly looks up to meet her gaze. He doesn't say anything at first. There is no smile on his face, no joy in his eyes only sadness that he is trying to push back down.

He says softly. "I'm very sorry."

[wives]
The pause is long, as she just stands there in shock for an uncountable number of heart-beatings. Finally, she steps back, and opens the door to him.

"You had better come in. Excuse me. I will get what you need."

Another woman has gathered in the hallway, the fat-bottomed second wife, who smiles at Marcus, her belly swollen to bursting with the Strider's baby. She smiles, then glances at her wife-sister.
Slowly, her arms go to her middle, an embrace. A protection. She too, disappears with the other woman into the back of the house.

The screams begin, heart-deep, the crying of several woman as the building becomes a house of mourning. A minute later, the senior Musembi returns, carrying a business-sized envelope addressed to:

MY PACKMATES

"He left this. In case. My sisters and I will be ready shortly to go to his body, to begin preparing him for burial."

Her eyes are dry, but her lips tremble, and the hand which offers Marcus the envelope is shaking hard. A different cry rings out through the house, pain and shock and then the chattery yelling of two Kenyan women updating the First Wife on immediate events.

"But first, we will take a small detour to the hospital. Chepchumbi has entered labor from the shock. She will not take long. Where is His body being held? The Caern? I swear this is just like that man. He hates seeing us in labor and will go to great lengths to avoid the birthing room!"

Her words end in a choked off sob.

[marcus]
Marcus takes the packet Sampson left behind. He doesn't say anything or move to comfort any of the women. It's not his place. He does keep his gaze down a bit, guilt washing over him as he sees Sampson's family.

He tells the First Wife. "He will be buried by his pack with full honor... If there is anything that you need from us please let us know. We're here for you until your tribe is able to make arrangements for you and your family."

[wives]
Chepleting blinks at Marcus, through growing tears, her voice faltering. "Ah... all of you? We are flattered. Truly. We are honored deeply. I will tell the other wives, that we belong to all of the Unbroken Circle now."

Oh my.

She murmurs a final thank you to Marcus for coming to them personally, and then withdraws to begin the many preparations to be done, while the back of the house wails in various forms of pain.

[lukas]
When Marcus steps away from the closing door, Sampson's First Wife -- First Widow -- can see his former Alpha down the path, past the gate, at the curb.

The Shadow Lord is standing beside his black M3. He doesn't lean against it. He stands straight, shoulders squared, hands laced behind his back. He meets the woman's eyes if she looks his way; does not flinch, but does not stare her down either. At the end, if she holds his eyes long enough, he nods to her.

Once. Very faintly.

Then his pale eyes shift to Marcus. He grasps the other by the shoulder, briefly, and then circles around to climb into the driver's side of the car.

"Let's finish this properly."

--

There's a mound of new-turned soil at the Grave of Hallowed Heroes.

Standing over it all in black, a small, fragile package in his hand, Lukas thinks it's too still and silent to mark the grave of a Garou like Sampson Skinny-Legs. It's too somber, and solemn, and stagnant. He can't remember ever seeing Sampson standing still. Even when the man slept, he flailed his arms and kicked his legs, rolled over and over, elbowed his bedmates. Lukas has memories of long uncomfortable nights out in the wild, the whole pack together, eight strong, some quest or another.

Dylan used to jostle to avoid sitting across from Sampson because it'd leave her with no space under the table. Lukas used to jostle to avoid sleeping next to Sampson because he'd inevitably get kicked in the middle of the night.

Dylan's gone now. And Sampson. And Mrena. And Edward. And Sam. And Katerina. Dead, dismissed, or simply departed -- of the pack of eight that came to Chicago, two remain.

Himself. Katherine.

...and Marcus, and Caleb.

But they're different. The nature of the pack is changing. Its flavor and feel is changing; evolving perhaps, or simply changing. The wide-eyed idealism is gone, burned or frozen away by death after death, departure after departure. Much of the youth and the exuberance is gone -- gone the way of Mrena, and Edward, and Sam, and Dylan. Sampson was the last champion of that wild joy, the gyring order out of chaos, the raw energy they descended on Chicago with.

Gone now. Dead and still. Stilled, silenced. Buried.

More and more, when Lukas looks up in the Umbra, he sees a different Flock than before. Gone are the small, bright raptors, the peregrines and the kestrels. Gone are the merlins, the hobbies. The birds-of-prey that wheel overhead now are large and dark, cold of eye, long and hooked of beak.

Gyrfalcons. Ospreys. Kites. Eagles. Harriers and hawks.
Rooks and ravens.

We've grown up, Lukas thinks to himself.

Or maybe:

We've grown cold.

He strips the wrapping from the package in his hand. Crouches. Carefully, with both hands, he adds an offering to brighten Sampson's grave.

It's not a flower. It's a pinwheel, a small, four-armed, brilliantly colored thing of thin, sharp-edged aluminum. Lukas plants it deep in the sandy soil of the lakeshore, then steps back and stands. It catches the lake wind and begins to turn, faster and faster.

The colors and the arms of the pinwheel blur; fuse into a disc, a circle.

--

That night, the pack occupies the common room once more. Red meat and red wine; four packmates, which are not eight but are packmates all the same, lounging around the sectional sofa like they owned it.

Lukas is quiet, which is not wholly unusual. He keeps his own counsel, drinks his wine, watches the lamplight scatter through the red. He listens with half an ear to his packmates.

When he speaks, it's abrupt; he interrupts whatever conversation there may have been.

"We need to remember."

He sits up, swings his feet to the floor, sets his glass down.

"Not only whom we lost or who they were, but who we are." Lukas's brow is fiercely furrowed; he looks at his hands as though what he wants to say, or what must be said, might be written in the lines of his palms. "There are a thousand packs out there that want to win the war. There are hundreds that have the courage to do what's necessary.

"The ones that will do what they must to win the war while retaining their vision and their ideals: those are few and far between.

"When Mrena died, we wondered if the pack had fragmented hopelessly. We wondered if we should abandon our ideals and reform under a different totem. We doubted our name; we thought we may have broken. We came to Chicago a circle of eight. Only half our number remained at that point. We'd changed Alphas four times.

"We chose, under Mrena's posthumous advice, to stay the course. The Talons of Horus chose us for our honor and our unity, she said. Since they had not abandoned us, we would not abandon them.

"The same question might be on your minds again. It was on mine, and I've wrestled with it since the night Sampson fell. Should we reform? Should we change our ideals? Should we lower the standard? Should we scatter?"

The Shadow Lord raises his head. The answer is in his eyes long before he says it. It's in the directness of his stare, the ferocity.

"Before Sampson died, he challenged me for Alphahood. He taught me that an Alpha does not lead by conference or committee. So this time, I'm not asking for opinions. I'm telling this pack:

"No.

"We will not abandon our ideals and our totem. We will not scatter or reform.

"Of the eight that this pack once was, only four remain. Of the eight that came to Chicago, only two remain. That is fine. Even if every last one of us die, even if this pack is made up of wolves we don't even know yet, that will be fine. The pack will rebuild. It will persevere. It is larger than we are, and more important. So long as the Talons of Horus watch over even one surviving member that believes what we did the day we formed the pack, the circle will remain unbroken.

"I am Alpha. that is the way this pack will go. If you disagree, challenge me now, or leave in peace with my blessing."

[marcus]
Marcus looks at Lukas as he speaks. His faces is stoic, he doesn't show he favors what he is saying, or disagrees with it. He simply listens.

He looks around for the others to speak before him, but when no one seems to be forth coming he does.

"Wyrmbreaker ~yuf. You are my Alpha. You asked me to join this pack. I gave you my word that I would do so, and serve it's cause. You have not dishonored yourself, nor have you treated me with disrespect. I will stay as long as this pack will have me. Where you lead I will follow."

He produces a packet and holds it out for Lukas to take. "Sampson's wife said he left this for us." It is marked simply: To My Packmates.

[kate]
Katherine and Sampson had not been close.

It was no secret that the haughty Fang considered herself to be higher in both breeding and intelligence than the lively Strider. Yet when she comes to the door of the home of her former pack-mate she is not the beautiful but remote girl his wives perhaps remember of days of old, when they first met and considered one another long and hard. She is dressed modestly in black this woman who approaches Sampson's first wife at the door, and her face seems wan and drawn in the light.

Older, wiser.

Lovely even in her grief, the eldest daughter of a warrior no different to Sampson Musembi hands Chepleting Musembi a bouquet of white lilies, dew still quivering on their petals. "I am sorry," she says somewhat stiffly, her face unwilling to soften, even here in the face of such despair. "If you require anything of my family, you have but to ask it," she says sincerely, if not warmly and turns to follow her remaining pack-mates.

--

Later, much later when they are all assembled around the Brotherhood's common room and Lukas first speaks he finds that Katherine does not look to him at first, her stare very fixed on some point, her mouth drawn and thin. He must wonder, for a moment if she who was his Alpha, who had long quarreled with him, led him, advised him and been as a sister in arms to him would concede in this, too.

Or would she who had been so loyal to her brother before him, now turn her face from the Talons? Would her pomp and arrogance stand before her loyalty to her pack? To her Alpha?

She is still and silent for some time after he speaks, after Marcus says his piece.

It is only then that she stirs, and her captivating blue eyes turn to look upon the man who claimed her allegiance. "I have long known that my destiny lay entwined with yours, Wyrmbreaker." She smiled, somewhat wryly. "I am not one to argue with Gaia's own will in this. You have always been a faithful, if not always agreed with, adviser to me and so I will remain to the end, your own in turn. Vivet Unbroken Circle!" She finishes with, slightly more cheerful.