[descent.] When the cool mistiness of dawn begins to break over them, as the first searing line of sunlight appears on the horizon, as the fire begins to burn low, as Kora's hands begin to completely give out, Naomi speaks:
"We've passed through the second gate."
[Wyrmbreaker] As the night rolls on, the rainwater dries from Lukas's clothes. He gets up once or twice to scavenge for wood, to feed the fire. When he comes back the second time, he sits on the ground instead -- dry now, the ground as well as himself -- and leans back against the log.
It's not his kind of music, no, but there's something to be said for the universality of music. Not canned music, the sort that comes from headphones and speakers and radios and 5.1 surround sound systems -- but true music, live music, music that comes from someone you can see, that wraps around you organic and alive.
He listens, and says very little, and enjoys it. He tips his head back and looks at the stars wheeling overhead
and minutes pass or hours, and some of them drowse and others stay awake, and then it's morning, and their guide speaks.
Which draws Lukas's attention. Which makes him stand up, dusting the seat of his pants off, holding his hand out to pull his fellow ritetakers up on their feet if they want the help.
"Let's go on, then."
[Face of Death] Joey stares into the fire without really seeing. She doesn't see the things that Kora sees, she doesn't see anything but dancing flames of orange and yellow and red. Her mind is far away as she listens to the Galliard play, so far in fact that when Naomi informs them that they've passed through the second gate, the Rotagar blinks several times, her gaze coming back from some faraway memory. She looks up at the young woman, no longer a child. Curious, that she seems older now, is. Is older now.
Joey pushes herself up to her feet, pushes her hands into the pockets of her jeans.
Let's go on, then.
Joey steps over the log that was her chair for the night. She turns her face to the oncoming dawn, chin uplifted as a smile curls about the corners of her mouth. When it's time to go, she falls into step with the others.
[Truth's Meridian] She doesn't notice that her jeans are drying, stiff as a board with creases of dirt crusted to them as Kora plays; which says a great deal. It might not be the Silver Fang's own brand of music but she's as enraptured and bound by the sounds of it as any of the other Garou she sits with.
Katherine watches the fire crackling and dancing, the brilliance of it reflected in pale blue eyes and when the fingers of dawn tug at the fabrics of the night, and pull back the sheets of stars above she blinks, returns seemingly to the present moment and pushes to her feet; hands on her knees. She stretches, fixes a crink in her spine and steps over the logs forming the glyph for pack.
She walks on.
[Rain of Brass Petals] These are her septmates. They all hear the same music, it's processed, and logged out, but it is all experienced differently. Adamidas spends the whole time sitting on a long, eyes close for a moment and she takes it in. All of it, she feels music more than hear it, because to her it is as much feeling as sound. And, to her, she will remember the feeling more than the sound. And she saw Kora as patient, and she saw Kora as devoted, and she saw music.
When they stood to leave, the Fury drifts by. She half smiles, "can you teach me to play like that?"
More than half hopeful.
[Blood Summons] The point isn't necessarily that she plays what they might all normally listen to, what they all might easily recognize, but that she plays. Across the fire, ebbing and roaring up again as they feed it with the kindling and bits of wood they find around the diamond of logs, Blood Summons watches her. He barely seems to blink, his eyes watching her unaccustomed fingers as they strum across the strings, but he's listening; his own fingers drum against his cheek, finding a rhythm within the acoustic strains coming from the guitar, and he does not shiver as the water evaporates from his skin, as his clothing shrinks against his body.
As the night crawls towards morning, something happens to Naomi. She gets older. It doesn't catch the metis's attention until the first threads of daylight begin to knit themselves into the air around them, and when it does, he blinks, suddenly, but says nothing.
No one says anything, really, until Wyrmbreaker stands from the log. Blood Summons looses a low rumble of agreement, his voice creaking with disuse, and he hefts himself to his feet, offering a hand to Waking Dream to help her up.
[Waking Dream] This isn't a fairytale. They weren't enchanted princes, dreaming wide-awake around a fire forever, until some third son (third pack) came to release them. Lila wasn't still -- not all that time. The galliard, quiet creature, stood once, twice, three times say to get wood for the fire and keep it burning. Fire wants to burn [and oh, a secret, tell you in a hush: wood wants to burn sometimes, some thing].
At daybreak, their guide speaks again; at daybreak, Lila, watchful Lila, accepts Bob's offered hand and lets him haul her up/hauls herself up. She lets natural gravity draw her into him, too, a bump, and then the blonde creature is reaching her arms up, up, up and up again, stretching, stretching a hello to Helios, stretching a hello to her muscles, bending one leg and letting herself fall forward a step. Stretching feels good. And then:
Still. She stands still until Kora moves, though, watching the cliath across the smoke-blacked ash, across the ember-grave. Then she smiles, breathes deep, when Rain or Brass Petals approaches, asks her (young) question, slipping her hands into her pockets, marking out where each stands, how each stands, making it a memory.
[descent.] [Everyone's healed from any remaining Bashing they had. Kora gains 1WP.]
[Sorrow] Maybe they sleep. Maybe they dream. She does not know what they see; she does not remember what they hear (and they hear everything she remembers, from Nirvana to Nick Drake, from the ode to joy to the Road to Joy, Radiohead to Sun Kil Moon – picked out, often imperfect, remembered, echoed, remade. Sometimes she sings, but mostly she plays, her throat too raw for words.)
Come morning, her hands are blooded and her past is in her throat – her deaths, her lives – each wrapped around the other, each wrapped into the other, like mobius strip, two sides and none, all sides and one.
Come morning – she puts the instrument aside and pushes her hands through her hair, painting the pale strands with her own blood. She does it again as she stands up, as she stretches out the remembered kink in her back, turns her face to morning, tips her chin toward their growing guide.
“I don’t have a guitar,” to Adamidas, as they step over the logs. They’ve passed through the second gate; there are five more to go. Her voice is quiet, and rich and low. “I’ll get one,” she pauses, looks up at Lila as they follow in Wyrmbreaker’s wake. “ – and then we’ll get together, see what you can do.”
[descent.] Birth of Song has started stepping over the logs, passing by the gathering place around the fire, heading to the supposed sun. She glances back at Kora when she tells Adamidas she doesn't have a guitar, but says nothing. She keeps walking, tromping through the grass. Which has gotten quite a bit taller. The sun takes care of what the fire couldn't: within maybe ten, fifteen minutes of walking, the lot of them can barely remember what it felt like to be saturated by rainy, muddy springtime.
It's summer now. The grass is like strands of emeralds clinging to their legs. The trees they pass thicken, the branches lush with leaves. The sun glints, clear and brilliant, and it's hard not to smile, especially after last night. They don't feel tired, though. Not any more. They don't feel afraid. They got through the first two gates: they slept, they reconnected, they --
Adamidas walks into a whitewashed cement wall that seems to come out of nowhere.
The building is a small, squat block of a thing. The whitewash chips. There are only a few small, square, dirty windows. There's a metal door, the hinges and handle rusting, set right in the middle. From within they can hear the tinny sound of a radio playing old country music.
Birth of Song is reaching for the third bell on her bandolier. "This should be interesting," says the suddenly brash female, smirking.
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas, like everyone else, notices their guide is suddenly changed. He doesn't ask -- yet. There will be time for that later. They're still early in their quest. Two gates. Five more to go.
One for each of them. He'll have to ask about that, too.
But not yet. Adamidas walks into a wall. He bites back a blurt of laughter. As they walked, he'd taken his jacket off. His clothes are dry and the jacket's slung over his shoulder, hooked on his fingers. The breeze is balmy, nowhere near cold.
"Looks like it's your turn, Theurge." And he reaches out to touch the wall as if to ascertain its reality.
[Truth's Meridian] Adamidas walks into a whitewashed cement wall.
Katherine, whose face had been lifted upward, eyes closed to soak up the warmth of the sun opens them at the sound of a body collecting something hard and immovable. "Goodness," she says mildly, with a trace of repressed laughter, a hand straying to reach for the Theurge's shoulder. "Are you quite alright?"
Then she too is looking at the building, listening with the tilted head to the faint strains of music.
[Face of Death] As they walk along, spring becomes summer, and the memory of being soaked by rain fades and fades and fades. Joey walks, lopes really, legs long and stretching and covering the distance easily and tirelessly. She moves with the swagger of an athlete, of someone who knows their body, knows its limits, knows how and when to push beyond them. Now is not that time. She moves easily among the others, flicking her bangs from her forehead, dark-eyed gaze taking in the change of scenery.
Summer. Now here is a season Joey can get behind. Joey was made for summer, her hair begging to be bleached in the outdoors, her freckles asking to become more prominent on her young face. She smiles as she walks, feeling rested, feeling alive.
She can't help but laugh a little when Adamidas runs into a building, a low huff quickly smothered. It might be Adam's turn. She might have just gotten to the challenge first.
Joey looks at Birth of Song, looks at her bell, looks back at the building. And she waits for it to begin.
[Waking Dream] "Wyrmbreaker," Lila says, putting her right hand on his left arm and pushing. Gentle! If he doesn't give, he doesn't give. Nonetheless: push/nudge. Don't mock the cliath! Then -- gaze flashing to Adamidas, staying there: "Inside?"
[Rain of Brass Petals] Walls were coming out of nowhere. Or, well, they were coming from somewhere. She might have had a response for Kora, she might have had thoughts and reasons, but they were gone for now. She walked into a wall.
She literally walked into a wall, hitting the whitewashed cement and shaking her head. The Fury reaches up to wipe her nose, more surprised than anything. Her fingertips drag over it, taking that in for the time being before she took a step back. The young Fury took in the entirety of the building. With its dirty, square windows and its rusting metal door.
Was she alright?
"My pride'll heal in the morning," she says. Adam pauses.
"This wasn't here when you guys passed, was it?" she moves to peer in, hopefully, through the dirty little windows.
[Sorrow] The walk is good. Kora has a long, loose jointed stride, the sunlight washes over her face and she lifts her head to the skin, eyes half-closed, the world an orange haze through the scrim of her lashes. Her long arms swing at her side, skim the ever-growing grass, fingers sweeping over the tips, pulling at the seeds wherever the ripening grass is in bloom, opening her palms when they are full and letting the wind take them, scattered shot, to reseed the undulant grassland, to be born again.
She ranges out, walking not in a line or a knot, but in the loose, changing net of a pack on the move, and pulls up short – stopped by Wyrmbreaker’s laughter, eyes opening, alert, flashing from the Guide to the slight Theurge, Lila, and back again – watching now, as she often does, her dark eyes intent, her features still, head canted to catch the strains of music from just beyond.
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons' limbs are unlocked as he strolls behind the two members of the Unbroken, as though that high tension energy that had jumped down the hole with him has dissipated, as though he'd actually gotten some rest tonight. Grass slaps at his shins, whispers across the leather of his boots, the smell of it fresh and new.
When the littler Theurge smacks into a chipped white wall, the Godi comes to an abrupt halt, as though the building has caught him as much by surprise as it had grabbed the Fury. It does not strike--hah--him as amusing, or if it does, he does not have to bite it back the way the Shadow Lord and Rotagar do. He does smile slightly when Waking Dream pushes at Wyrmbreaker, then walks up behind Rain, easily eclipsing her as he peers over her head and into the window.
This should be interesting, says Birth of Song, and the Godi just flicks his eyebrows.
[descent.] The cement block building is quite real to Wyrmbreaker's touch. Whitewash comes off on his hand, dusting pale and chalky on his fingertips.
Adamidas and Blood Summons, Crescent Moons to the core, peer into the windows of the building. Adam finds they're at eye level. Blood Summons discovers he must bend over and twist his neck to look through the dingy, cracked glass.
[descent.] Inside, the building is even more depressing. Puke-green walls. An examination table, complete with crackling paper cover. Some low countertops with canisters of swabs, tongue depressors, a box of gloves, the like. It's a doctor's office gone to seed, though an effort at cleanliness is clearly made. It isn't clean, though. Nothing about this place is clean, at least not on first glance.
A figure shuffles by, wearing a white lab coat, and then peers back at them for a moment. He doesn't look surprised, the bespectacled, nearly-bald man looking at them. Blood Summons and Adamidas are, therefore, the only ones who have a heads up that the door is about to open.
to Blood Summons, Rain of Brass Petals
[descent.] A few seconds after the metis and the Fury look through the windows, the metal door creaks and shrieks as its handle is twisted. It scrapes open, a male voice muttering about needing some WD-40. Or a new door. They'll never pay for a new door. Cheap bastards.
He peers out at them. He counts visibly, finger tapping in the air at each of their heads, pausing in front of Birth of Song -- whose hand is on her bell -- and then he wags his finger back and forth like an upright pendulum, tsking. "At least give her a chance. Goodness."
Turning to Adamidas, holding the door open for her. "Alright then. Come along, miss. Time for your checkup."
[Blood Summons] Anyone looking at the two spirit-talkers will recognize the look that comes across Blood Summons' face as he peers through the window: what the fuck? Whatever he sees in there is alien to him. He jerks away as a shadow falls across the window, then takes several steps back to give the Fury room to move when the door opens, that expression on his face slow to evaporate.
[Rain of Brass Petals] She's normally olive-complected. She's got a potential to tan in her, and the fact that the color drained from her face while she was looking through the window made it quite, quite clear. She's not shaking. No, on the contrary she's done a very, very good job of keeping herself quite, quite stationary.
The Fury takes a step away from the window, and finds herself looking at a nearly bald man, glasses, older than her. Old enough to be her father, old enough to be her grandfather if someone sowed some wild oats as a teenager.
"That's fine," she tells him, she offers the sweetest and most charming of smiles that she can muster. It doesn't reach her eyes, "I'm not sick."
He holds the door open, and she doesn't move forward. She says the last words with conviction, like she's said them more times than she's cared to count. Like she's held them firm in her mind, in her her heart, that she's even screamed them.
It takes her a second to realize that this has to be some kind of test, but those seconds do not occur right now.
[descent.] "Well. I'll be the judge of that, miss," says the rather harmless-seeming man standing in the doorway. He wipes his sleeve across his forehead. "Gracious, it's hot out here." And it is. Cold air churns inside. "How are any of you managing? Goodness."
Goodness. Gracious. Goodness. He nods his head inside. "We can't keep you healthy if you won't cooperate, Amanda. I'd rather your orderly there not have to step in," he adds with a slightly raised eyebrow, indicating Birth of Song.
[Sorrow] Kora has her arms crossed, her head tipped downward now. This isn't her story, not now and not yet, and so she is quiet, quiet - sketching the pieces back into the fabric of her memory, the smirk and the bell, the radio that is distant, its song irregular. There is no mistaking the look on Blood Summons' face; the way Adamidas goes from olive to ash, standing still as a dream of silence, holding herself so stationary that Kora cannot help but read the potential for movement in every line of the theurge's face and frame.
Dark eyes cut from the bald man back to Birth of Song, back again.
[Truth's Meridian] Katherine is standing close to and a few steps behind the Black Fury when the door opens and the stranger steps out, telling her its time for her check-up. Without thought, one of the Silver Fang's palms wraps around Adamidas' shoulder and gently, gently squeezes. It's a reassurance, perhaps. It's a question and a plea all at once.
The pale eyes shift to Birth of Song; drop to her bell; lips tighten.
[Face of Death] [Curiosity]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Waking Dream] Blood Summons' expression changes and Lila, who became a certain kind of stillness, smoke lanced by a fall of light (movement [roiling] in place), when the doctor came out -- so mundane, so normal -- and called Adamidas down for a check up and her jaw tenses for a second when Adamidas says, sweet, I'm not sick. The Child of Gaia brushes her fingertips across her forehead, touches her temple, as she walks around Blood Summons to look wide-eyed through the small (besmirched) window too.
[Face of Death] The Theurges head for the windows, peek inside, and pull back. Ashen-faced and disturbed. The young Rotagar, usually burning with fierce curiosity, wants to know. She wants to know what they saw that made the Fostern Godi and the Cliath Theurge recoil. Joey doesn't go to the window, though, doesn't peer inside. Perhaps they'll find out soon enough, if all of them are to go inside the building together.
Clinic. The small white-washed building seems like a clinic. The bald-headed man calls Adamidas "Amanda." That makes Joey watch the Fury all the more closely. She sees in the set of her shoulders that Adamidas is resistant.
Katherine squeezes her shoulder. Kora watches on. Joey steps forward, nudges Adam in the back. Not hard enough to propel her forward, just an encouraging sort of pressure.
[descent.] Inside, the building is even more depressing. Puke-green walls. An examination table, complete with crackling paper cover. Some low countertops with canisters of swabs, tongue depressors, a box of gloves, the like. It's a doctor's office gone to seed, though an effort at cleanliness is clearly made. It isn't clean, though. Nothing about this place is clean, at least not on first glance.
to Waking Dream
[Rain of Brass Petals] [God, kid, just do it!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Wyrmbreaker] If this were any other quest or mission, Lukas would distrust the man in the doorway. He'd trust Adamidas's instinct of aversion; he'd put himself between them and get his people to safety. Somehow.
But this is not a mission against the Wyrm, or the Weaver. This is a Rite; a test. It's not his place to step in. He stays where he is, neither pushing the Theurge forward nor holding her back.
He says to her, though -- quietly -- "You'll do fine, Adamidas." And then he too goes to the window, rubbing out a circle of cleanness to peer inside.
[Rain of Brass Petals] I'd rather your orderly there not have to step in-
"No," the response is immediate.
Never had she seemed so young and so small as she did at that moment. At that moment, she was exactly what she tried hardest not to be- a wary, weary sixteen year old girl. There's a hand on her shoulder, and there is palpable tension there. Her muscles refused to move for the longest time.
She looked at Katherine, and her dark eyes seemed darker there, brows pushed together and up, pleading that she, of all people, would believe her. Katherine Bellamonte was a Silver Fang, they knew about being... offcenter. And from there, the pale Fury turns.
She looks back at them, and her mind wanders... only to be pulled back immediately.
Alethea Adamidas heads inside, and calls back to those with her.
"I'll be right back," come get me, please.
[descent.] Inside, the building is even more depressing. Puke-green walls. An examination table, complete with crackling paper cover. Some low countertops with canisters of swabs, tongue depressors, a box of gloves, the like. It's a doctor's office gone to seed, though an effort at cleanliness is clearly made. It isn't clean, though. Nothing about this place is clean, at least not on first glance.
to Wyrmbreaker
[Waking Dream] "You will," Lila says, straightening slowly. Her smile is brief but luminous (and her voice, low, clear: a bright [intense] thread to follow). "Or we'll come in and get you."
[descent.] The gatekeepers are not their enemies, Naomi said, when she was Youngest Mother, Oldest Friend. Which she still is, one presumes. Maybe she's also a Fostern Galliard called Birth of Song. Maybe it's the same girl. Maybe it's several lives morphing the same body. Maybe she's not alive.
They don't question her. She keeps her fingertips on the ebony handle of the third bell, looking almost eager to use it, and wrinkles her nose when Adamidas decides to go with the supposed doctor. Gatekeeper. Spirit.
Whatever.
Not enemies, she'd said. But also: demanding.
The man in the white coat ushers Rain of Brass Petals inside with him, hands off of her. She tells the others she'll be back, but what she means is a plea that they ensure it. He tugs on the door handle, and it scrapes across the frame, and closes with a jangling snap. They hear a squeal of a lock being turned.
The woods they're in -- and they have become woods, this area, no longer just a meadow but something like a wild orchard -- go silent. Only the breeze rustles the branches on occasion. Birth of Song takes her hand off the bell and closes the clasp.
[Taking Adamidas to PMs. However: now is a good downtime if your PCs have any questions for Naomi, or so on.]
[descent.] The office is unchanged. The man goes to the tiny radio on the counter and turns the dial, shutting off the country music. He starts to put on some gloves. "Alright. Up on the table. You can take off your shoes if you'd like." A smile over his shoulder. "We want you to be as comfortable as possible, after all. This won't take but a minute."
The latex is snug around his wrists. "My name is Dr. Warren," he says, putting on his stethoscope. "And I am the only doctor you will ever meet who will tell you the truth."
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas watches as the door closes behind the Cliath. For a moment Adamidas seems quite small and slight, not at all a warrior of Gaia.
When the door is shut he lowers his head for a moment. Then he turns to face the others.
"What was your test, She Who Offers Sorrow?" He grimaces faintly at the inexactness of his question; tries again, "I mean ... what about you was being tested?"
[Rain of Brass Petals] He's trying; he really is. She tries to give him the benefit of the doubt, but she can taste her pulse, and it's too hard and too fast. She tastes copper, even if there's no blood in her mouth. She starts to head to the table and she sits down on top of it. She moves like this is all a practiced motion, like she's done this dozens of times. The Fury grips the table like it's going to run away from her if it does.
He smiles, and she can't.
she braces for questions, rattles of pages and pages of medications in her head. Toils through potential side effects and adverse health reactions. She thinks of whether or not things are injected or ingested or breathed in too deep.
"My name's not Amanda," she tells him. She insists.
to descent.
[descent.] The paper crackles underneath her as she sits down. Dr. Warren approaches her and starts to take her vitals. It's all familiar; the motions, the gestures. The move this, up a bit, hold still, take a deep breath. "Hmm," is all he says to her insistence that her name isn't Amanda. He knocks on her knee and watches her leg kick out. He makes a couple of notes on a form on a clipboard on the countertop.
"Well, I can tell you right now you're going to be alone forever. So it really doesn't matter what you're called, does it?"
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons quite literally grimaces when that door's lock cries out. There had been something in the young girl's fear that was almost infectious, that has the lot of them reaching out to her, trying to tell her It'll be alright when they don't know what exactly she's afraid of, when they hadn't known to attach the name 'Amanda' to her person until the balding little doctor had called her name. The Godi reaches up to scratch at his wrinkled forehead, then casts one last glance at the smudged-clean window pane before he crosses his arms over his chest and gets comfortable standing for the duration.
Wyrmbreaker questions Sorrow, and Blood Summons waits for the answer without any great dedication. He seems more interested in what Birth of Song is doing, his sky-blue eyes flitting from the Skald to the older version of Naomi.
[Waking Dream] Lukas questions she who offers sorrow and Lila, who closed her eyes for a moment, whose hair was so gold it could be light and glass, filaments waving, curling from the affair they've carried on with the night's air, who looked into that dirty room and saw nothing good at all, opens her eyes after a moment. When she does, she is looking, consideringly, at Naomi. Birth of Song. The brash woman who was a frail girl not long ago (what seems so long ago). She doesn't ask her anything, not quite yet, but questions are rising in her eyes, and she likely won't keep them long.
No. She won't. Because - perhaps just after Kora has answered - "How many times have you acted as guide for this Rite?"
[Sorrow] Kora is still, back straight, arms crossed over her dark t-shirt. No longer damp, it is nevertheless still fitted to her frame. Wyrmbreaker addresses her, then. There is a fleeting suggestion of surprise in her pale brows, in the sudden jerk of her head away from the door in the wall that has just been pulled shut. A narrow line bisects her forehead, precursor to a thoughtful frown that is never fully born.
“It’s like an onion skin, Wyrmbreaker-rhya. The answer, I mean.” she says, uncrossing her arms then, gesturing with her hands, thumbs up, as if she were starting to peel that thing. The darts of the faint frown break open, settle, her forehead smoothes. “ – there’s a paper layer that peels back easily, and others beneath.
“The Gatekeeper asked me to remember that I am human, too, reminded me of the life I’d left behind when I changed - ” subtle interpolation, here. The creature’s dark eyes slice toward Lila. More is necessary to understand it. This is the interlude. “ – it was late, and I was lost. New to - ” a gesture, like she was waving away midges, meant to include, “ – all of this. I suppose I split myself in half, and became this half – Fenrir, Garou – a whole new book, not an ongoing narrative. I had to take up an old part of myself that I left behind in the before, to open the gate.”
Then her attention swings back, from the Shadow Lord to the Guide, alert and watchful.
[Rain of Brass Petals] "It matters to me," she tells him, "and how do I know you're not lying? How can you know what's going to happen?"
It's not what she tells people. The paper crackles, and her mouth is dry as she swallows. She's defensive, she's defiant, these are all reactions she's had before. But she thinks... there are people outside of that door, who told her they would come in,that they would help if she didn't come back. [They aren't your sisters]. She doesn't think of the times she's heard that before ["... Amanda, you're not well, but when you're better, you can come home."]
Her heartbeat is twice that of the average person. Her temperature is two and a quarter degrees above 98.6. Her reflexes are normal.
to descent.
[descent.] Kora and Lukas speak to each other, and then Lila speaks to Birth of Song. Who smiles, a bit thinly perhaps -- almost a smirk, very nearly a smirk -- and just says,
"A few. It has to be done every year, after all."
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas nods. "I understand that," he says quietly. "I never call myself Lukáš Kvasni&+269;ka anymore, do you know that?" A faint sketch of a smile, there and then gone. "I guess it's something of the same thing. I think most Garou have something of the same ... problem. Habit."
He turns to Blood Summons, then. "What about you? What was your test?"
[descent.] We'll come get you. When you're better. When you're not sick anymore.
After awhile the answer got easier to hear in her head: Sure you will. Sure. After awhile it got easier to bite her tongue, to not bother to tell them I'm not sick. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Never gonna get better, though.
"Well, I am a doctor," says Warren, and indicates that she should open her mouth for the tongue depressor so he can peer down her throat while he chatters on: "I know a thing or two. Like the fact that everyone keeps leaving you. And you really have to wonder why, don't you? What about you is so repellant that even your packmates don't take you along with them? I mean, if I were you that sort of question would keep me up at night. Goodness, if they left you, no surprise that the Garou outside have already wandered off without you, right?"
He frowns. "Were you aware of the blockage in your throat, Amanda?"
to Rain of Brass Petals
[descent.] We'll come get you. When you're better. When you're not sick anymore.
After awhile the answer got easier to hear in her head: Sure you will. Sure. After awhile it got easier to bite her tongue, to not bother to tell them I'm not sick. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Never gonna get better, though.
"Well, I am a doctor," says Warren, and indicates that she should open her mouth for the tongue depressor so he can peer down her throat while he chatters on: "I know a thing or two. Like the fact that everyone keeps leaving you. And you really have to wonder why, don't you? What about you is so repellant that even your packmates don't take you along with them? I mean, if I were you that sort of question would keep me up at night. Goodness, if they left you, no surprise that the Garou outside have already wandered off without you, right?"
He frowns. "Were you aware of the blockage in your throat, Amanda?"
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Sorrow] Sorrow huffs out a breath; amusement, recognition. The name you have, which no longer fits. The name you have, that shrinks and dries around you like mud, then flakes away.
[Face of Death] Joey is one of the few of the ritetakers that doesn't peer inside the windows of the little building. Others do, and they apparently see something bad, something horrible. Still, the curious Fenrir doesn't look inside. Whatever they see might not be related to Adam's trial, and if it is, well. It's Adam's trial, not hers.
While the others question each other, Joey leaves them. She rolls up the sleeves of her long-sleeved tee, and she does a circuit around the building. As she walks, she reaches out with her right hand, trailing fingertips along the chipping paint, smearing across glass panes if there are other windows. She's just looking, at the grass and at the trees. Here is a real forest. It's not like Tekakwitha, and not like the woods she found in Wisconsin after Charlie died.
She stops between them and looks up at the green leaves. She listens to the wind rustle and sigh. Eventually, she starts walking again, returning to the others, looking out over the distance they've traveled. Looking at her fellow travelers. They're all dry now, clothing no longer stiff with dried rain but fluid and loose from motion. She looks up at the sky for a while. Joey crosses her legs at the ankles, and drops to the ground, runs her hands over the blades of grass. She looks up at the others, watching, listening, alert, all the while keeping that door in her peripheral.
[Blood Summons] When Wyrmbreaker turns towards him, the weight of his gaze drags Blood Summons' attention away from their guide. His eyebrows briefly rise when he asks what about him, as though he had put the question posed to Sorrow out of his mind; there isn't any great enthusiasm in his expression when the Ahroun elder asks him what his task was, and his arms actually cross over his chest much as they had been when they were standing in front of the first gate.
He doesn't have a withered Elder at his side this time, and he is not shot through with the need to keep moving, but he doesn't appear to possess any amount of ease in talking about what had happened while the rest of them slumbered.
A visible breath is hauled into his lungs, and he holds onto it as he looks back across the distance at the Shadow Lord. The Fenrir holds onto that breath as though the answer to the question is held within it, and when he lets it out, his speech comes with it.
"I've been acting as though," he says, "there's a Gauntlet between my mind and my body. Letting my body exhaust itself while my mind stays on all the time." He looks upward, almost rolling his eyes, and scoffs at himself. "I had to let them both rest at the same time."
[descent.] We'll come get you. When you're better. When you're not sick anymore.
After awhile the answer got easier to hear in her head: Sure you will. Sure. After awhile it got easier to bite her tongue, to not bother to tell them I'm not sick. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Never gonna get better, though.
"Well, I am a doctor," says Warren, and indicates that she should open her mouth for the tongue depressor so he can peer down her throat while he chatters on: "I know a thing or two. Like the fact that everyone keeps leaving you. And you really have to wonder why, don't you? What about you is so repellant that even your packmates don't take you along with them? I mean, if I were you that sort of question would keep me up at night. Goodness, if they left you, no surprise that the Garou outside have already wandered off without you, right?"
He frowns. "Were you aware of the blockage in your throat, Amanda?"
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Truth's Meridian] Katherine does not ask questions of their guide; rather she stands quite as she was when the Black Fury left them to enter the squat little building; her lips down-turned. Her pale eyes full of cautious hope -- that Adam succeeds, that they'll reawaken the next season; that she will not be the one to stall this rite when it comes to her gate.
There are traces of dried dirt on the pads of her fingers where she's had them resting against her jeans. She brushes it off, and crosses her arms over her chest; waiting. Silent.
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas listens as carefully and quietly to Blood Summons as he did to the Godi's tribeswoman. When he's finished, the Shadow Lord turns back to the window, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening within.
"It's like we're exorcising personal flaws," he says, and scrubs at the window again with the base of his fist. "And if I'm not mistaken, the tests seem to be getting a little harder."
[Truth's Meridian] "In which case," his pack-mate offers quietly, honestly. "I do not look forward to my own gate."
[Rain of Brass Petals] [May 20th, 1998
"Stay in the car, AP-"
"Momma-"
"Stay. In. The. Car. I will be back."
"No, you won't-"
"I will be back, I promise, this is just going to take a moment, we're getting gas and then we're going again-"
"-Momma, don't go in there-"
"Alethea Penelope. It will be fine. Just wait."
Alethea pushed herself back against the passenger seat and waited. Adn waited. There was a loud noise, a roar, Alethea hid in the floorboard of the beat up mustang they'd been driving. She pressed herself down into the floorboard, covered up with her mother's coat. Waited...
waited...]
"But they had to-" she insists "-they didn't leave me, they left to- they'll... they'll be back."
Adam is every bit insistent about this. They didn't leave her; Irene and Alek would be back. They would be back, they were coming back, she would see them again. [Even if that meant seeing them in their ancestral homelands, they wouldn't abandon her, right?]
"There's nothing wrong with me, though," she insists, and it's forceful again. That she is intent and purposed. There is nothing wrong with her-
[January 12, 2007
"Amanda, please take a deep breath-"
"Andit'sloudandbuzzingscreachingawfulMissusCarrick-" she spoke quickly and rapidfire. She was lookin around, staring from her foster mother to the mirror on the wall. She swore that she could have seen something move"andit's In. There-"
"Amanda, it was a bad dream-"
"It's real, I know it, I know it I saw it, they said-"
She broke down sobbing. Her foster mother held her.]
She opens her mouth, stops talking long enough for him to check, praying for a clean bill of health that she never seemed to receive. They always found something; doctors were smart like that. They always found something. She gripped the edge of the table tighter, tight enough that she thought her knuckles might pop-
[January 13, 2007
Amanda Carrick's things were gone. Her new room recently made up. The bed was uncomfortable.]
Did she know there was a blockage in her throat. She shook her head no. Her mouth was closed.
to descent.
[Waking Dream] The touch of contemplative regard isn't quite unswerving, but very nearly, and she stills, stills, stills, until she can hear the drum of her own heartbeat underneath Birth of Song's brief answer, Blood Summons' own answer to Lukas' question.
Then, quietly, searchingly: "And always somewhere different? How do you know where to stop and how do you know who to call? Where's the rest of the story, -rhya? What gave you your names?" What deeds, what creature.
Lila blinks, suddenly, and gives Lukas a half-wary look -- "Someone should look in the window." -- and he is already scrubbing it.
[descent.] "No, I really don't think they will be," Dr. Warren tells her. "In any case, it'll probably be too late. There's something stuck in there. Don't worry. This won't hurt."
And with that, he shoves his fist down her throat.
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas, at least, still seems to have it in him to laugh. It rings out richly, unabashedly, his voice restored again from the mockery it was for nearly a month.
"Get ready to get muddy, Kate," is all he says before turning back to the window, cupping his hands around his eyes like a child peeping into a closed toy store.
[descent.] What Wyrmbreaker sees accompanies the reflexive sound of gagging, of an attempt to scream, of the need for air overcoming all restraint. He sees --
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons grunts when Wyrmbreaker observes that the tests seem to be getting harder, watches him work at the dirt on the window pane for a moment before taking a step forward to peer around the Full Moon's shoulder to see inside. No one had explicitly stated that they would go into the small (clinic) building after the young Theurge, but that sense of preparatory action seems to be writing itself into the Fenrir's stance again as he looks through the smudged spot written into the window.
[descent.] The doctor who took Adamidas is inside with her. She's perched on the examination table, on that crackling paper cover, and he has his fist down her throat, is reaching in up to his forearm.
to Wyrmbreaker
[descent.] The doctor who took Adamidas is inside with her. She's perched on the examination table, on that crackling paper cover, and he has his fist down her throat, is reaching in up to his forearm.
to Blood Summons
[Wyrmbreaker] -- what Lukas sees cuts off his laughter. He blanches.
"What the fuck," that, hushed.
[descent.] Birth of Song hears the attempted screaming, muffled thickly by something, and looks towards the low block building. She reaches, again, for the bell on her bandolier, as though readying herself.
[Blood Summons] The Godi's skin doesn't pale at what he sees within the tiny window, but he does have to visibly halt himself from recoiling and moving towards the door.
"Shit," Bob confirms.
[Wyrmbreaker] Spinning away from the window a second later -- just in time for everyone else to crowd and see, perhaps -- Lukas wheels on Birth of Song.
"What the fuck!" he repeats, edged and edgy this time. "What's going on in there?"
[Sorrow] That draws Kora's attention. Her pale head whips around, muscles taut. Shoots a watchful look toward the guide and then.
Looks.
[Face of Death] Lila says someone should look into the windows, check on Adam. Little Adam who had seemed so nervous, so afraid.
Blood Summons and Lukas go, they look and
are horrified.
The blonde women are on their feet or rushing forward, crowding the windows.
[Rain of Brass Petals] Her eyes widened, and the smallish young lady gagged. her eyes watered, and she did the only thing she could think of to do. The Fury tried to close her mouth, and she tried to close it down fairly hard at that. The human jaw can put forth a great deal of pressure, not nearly as much as a wolf could, but it was still astounding. She was doing whatever she could to make sure that he moved back, that he pulled out, that he pulled away. Legs kicked, fingertails dug in, and she tried to scream.
Sound wasn't quite working, though, and she was terrified.
She had seemed so afraid, so taut and nervous, because she had a fairly vague idea of what she was walking into.
[descent.] They can all see it now, though the windows make the image dim and shadowed. Adamidas is sitting on the examination table on that crackling, thin paper cover.
And the doctor has his arm down her throat, as though digging for something, almost up to his elbow now. He looks focused, is concentrating, is grimacing from it. Adam's throat and jaw are distended, the thin tissue at the corners of her mouth stretching...stretching...
[Truth's Meridian] Instant: "What the hell is he doing to her? I'm going in there." Enraged; pale eyes gleaming. Katherine isn't sure who to lash out at first.
[descent.] Their ritesmistress and guide stares back at Wyrmbreaker, frowns. "Don't fucking yell at me, I'm not the one being tested, here! Maybe your friend did it wrong, I don't know!"
Inside, Doctor Warren is yelling at Adamidas. The others can't hear the words clearly, but she can: "Stop that wiggling! You're only making this harder on yourself!"
And then, while some are looking at windows, seeing what's being done to the slight-bodied Fury, Birth of Song shakes her bell rapidly, jangling out a harsh and repetitive E.
E.
E.
[Willpower roll, diff 8.]
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas grabs Kate by the arm, but he doesn't say anything to his packmate. He stares at their guide, breathing elevated, eyes flashing: waiting for an answer.
[Blood Summons] [WP -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 9 (Failure at target 8)
[Wyrmbreaker] [bump my post before kai's!]
[Face of Death] "No!" Joey turns to the Fostern Philodox. "It's her challenge, she has to do this. She has to." It's said with conviction.
She looks to Lukas.
[WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Wyrmbreaker]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Rain of Brass Petals] [WP: ack!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Truth's Meridian]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 8 (Failure at target 8)
[Waking Dream]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Sorrow] Kora staggers back, it is this: one step, heel to toe, then another. There is bile in her throat, sour as an unearned rebirth and - and -
mi. clear and sure.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Waking Dream] The galliard looks (and her blood boils). Then she takes one deliberate -- careful -- step away from the window. That step away from the window is a promise: fluid, violence. The window which is tiny. Too tiny to break, and slither through? She catches her breath, sharp, and she has taken another step -- this, toward the door. But she arrests herself, stops herself, and looks toward their guide.
[descent.] [Failure: The sound of the bell locks Bob and Kate into place, planting their feet to the ground and impeding all their movement. As they struggle to resist it, their torsos, then their arms, and finally their necks and heads become immobile. They can move their eyes and mouths, but barely.]
to Blood Summons, Truth's Meridian
[descent.] [1 Suxx: The sound of the bell impedes Adam and Kora's movement considerably. They can struggle to move their arms and legs and everything else, but all movement -- even to do something as simple as bite down or turn their head -- is at a +2 difficulty.]
to Rain of Brass Petals, Sorrow
[descent.] [2 Suxx: The sound of the bell does not make them tired, or wake them up. What it does is slow them down. They are alert enough to see instantly that Blood Summons and Katherine have utterly stopped moving, that Kora looks caught in molasses, that Adam's fighting inside is getting more difficult. They feel the effects, too: all movement, even to take a step or turn their head, is at a +1 difficulty.]
to Face of Death, Waking Dream, Wyrmbreaker
[descent.] [Roll me perception + alertness, diff 7.]
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Rain of Brass Petals] [Per+alert: what's this?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 7, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7) [WP]
to descent.
[Face of Death] Joey feels her body slow, feels movement become more difficult. And part of her wants to fight it. She wants to fight it because she wants to be in motion, tapping her fingers or bobbing her head, or just...moving.
She doesn't try to, though. She doesn't try to go for the door, doesn't try to save Adamidas from the challenge designed for her. If these tests are indeed to purge them of some flaw, this is something only the Theurge can do. So she holds still even though it kills her, even though the others have stopped moving.
Since her vow of silence, she's gotten pretty good at waiting.
[Blood Summons] The lot of them seem prepared to storm into the tiny building, but as Blood Summons steps back from the window and turns on his heel, that high E note sings into the coming dawn air and--he halts, as though all that potential for movement has suddenly turned to inert concrete, as though he's been frozen in place. He stops dead in his tracks, just as the others had fallen to the earth in slumber earlier in the evening, though his eyes don't close. His eyes stay on the door. His body, though, doesn't do so much as twitch towards it.
[Truth's Meridian] Lukas takes Kate's arm; the bells toils [for thee]. He can feel her muscles turn almost solid; like concrete. It travels up the Philodox's fuming form and she's suddenly as immobile as a block of granite. Only her eyes continue to seethe; only they continue to burn with unspent wrath.
It's all she can manage.
[Truth's Meridian] [grr, tolls]
[descent.] She can see them at the windows. The Garou rushing towards the glass when they saw Lukas react to what he saw in here. She can see the rage in their faces, the horror, the wrath as they turn away to yell at -- she can imagine -- their guide. All the while that digging is going on, bringing tears to her eyes, causing
pain
and he's not sedating her, he's not taking it away, he said he'd be honest after all. "Amanda," he grunts, as her skin begins to split around her mouth, as agony rips through her from the jaw down, as bile rises and she cannot help but vomit, even onto his fingers, "do you really want them to save you?"
He grunts because he's working. Because this is difficult. But his voice is calm, still. He isn't angry, and he isn't cajoling, convincing her to give up, give in, give out. He sounds almost... gentle.
to Rain of Brass Petals
[Sorrow] It is like being captured in slowly-drying resin. Sorrow is two staggered half-steps away from the window when the note rings out. She turns her head toward their Guide, every muscle in her body demanding movement, but the air has a specific density to it that leaves her breathless, chest aching, pushing through the amber substrade, working just to right herself, to bring one foot in line with the other.
[Wyrmbreaker] "Stop!"
That's to -- who? Everyone, perhaps. Everyone still capable of listening. Their guide; his ritemates, all of them. Kate. Waking Dream. All of them.
"Stop. This is her test. Hers. We can't help her. We won't be allowed to and we can't." He lets go Kate's arm, turns his head ... so slowly ... to look at Joey, then Lila. "Let her do what she has to. By herself."
[Rain of Brass Petals] They can't hear it, but she makes the most pitiful sound. And it's not because she has a man's arm shoved down her throat, that the skin is stretching, that she is nauseous or anything to that extent-
But because she can't move. Because it's hard. Because it's incredibly hard, and it takes force of will for her to pick up her arms. She isn't made of lead. She isn't made of steel or rusting metal. She just... can't move.
But she doesn't move. She lets her arms fall to her sides, and her eyes water and her body trembles and everything hurts. She's gagging, Hell, she can't help but throw up because of all of this-
but he isn't taking anything. He said he would be honest.
Do you really want them to save you?
She shakes her head as tears streak down her cheeks, no.
She's doing this for them. She's doing this for spring. [She's doing it for herself, too, and in a second she'll realize that] She caught a look at them in the window- people she didn't know. People she had met maybe a hand full of times, people whose names she barely remembered, but shared a sept with her. People who said they would help her, people who looked as though they were willing.
to descent.
[descent.]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[Face of Death] Joey never had any intention of moving to help the Theurge. The only movement she makes is to turn her head.
Back toward the window. To watch, to witness, to see if Adam makes it through this.
[descent.] No, she says, with that slow and struggling shake of her head. As she cries. His arm is up to its shoulder now. She's going to get torn apart. She's taking lashes of agony through her. She senses tearing, blood, pain.
"So who is going to?" murmurs Dr. Warren, as his fingers close around her heart.
[Soak 6L]
to Rain of Brass Petals
[descent.] Those who look, see: he's in up to his shoulder now. There's blood rushing across Adam's face, down her jaw and throat. This should be impossible to do, impossible to survive, but then:
it is tearing her apart, after all.
[Rain of Brass Petals] [oh JESUS!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to descent.
[Waking Dream] The galliard's wide green eyes don't at first flicker toward Lukas, although she is listening to him, and she is carrying herself so motionless (beloved) that he might -- they might all -- think that she was struck immobile, slowed, ant in honey, drowning. She'd stopped, after all. Stopped, just as the bell rang out, halted, and she held herself contained.
Until: an easing, from one position to another, her weight shifting from hip to hip. She presses her hand against the door, and it is a slow, graceful gesture, but not stopped. She presses her palm flat against it, and then her eyes flick to Wyrmbreaker, and they're bright with something.
"I trust Youngest Mother, Oldest Friend to protect us. But what if some word would help her; give her the -- what she needs to do what she needs to do?"
[Rain of Brass Petals] There's blood on her face, there's blood on her lips, and she cal feel his fingers close around her heart. She can feel all of it, and it hurts. It hurts horribly, desperately, terribly, in a way she's not felt before. Her heart wasn't beating so fast anymore- slowing down, and there was still room to go. He was holding her heart, and she couldn't move
[All of it culminated int his, all of it. Everything she did was to combat that thought of being stuck, of ensuring that something like this wouldn't ever happen to her again. Her bow, her manner, her dealings with spirits, all of it kept so she would have an escape, that she could flee-]
She can barely scream, namely because so much of the sound is muffled, and so much of her is stuck and he's nearly up to his shoulder, holding her heart in the most literal sense.
She wants them to help her. She wants them to rescue her. She wants help-
[You're going to be alone forever]
No I won't
[They should have left without you]
They stayed.
to descent.
[descent.] Abruptly, he lets go. He withdraws his arm slowly, covered in bile, in blood. Dr. Warren stands in the middle of the room, fingertips dripping, and frowns thoughtfully at her. He shakes his head after a moment, turns towards the counter, and gets a towel to begin wiping himself off. Takes off his gloves, and his coat, and reveals a trim, well-muscled body underneath covered in glyphic tattoos that she knows mean things like
truth
honesty
epiphany
She finds her throat does not work. Even swallowing causes agony.
He walks to the door and opens it with a loud, slow creak. Those stuck in midair find their muscles beginning to loosen. They also see the tattoos, the body of a Garou, the body of... something not quite a human doctor. There are traces of Adam's blood on him, and other... fluids.
His eyes go to Birth of Song, holding the bell. "What is not given must be taken," he recites. "These are the rites of the underworld."
About to turn back in, he looks at her with a frown. "She wasn't ready. Be more careful next time."
Back in the examination room, door left open this time, he reaches into a canister and takes out a grape-flavored lollipop and holds it out to Adam. "Don't worry," he says, "it's sugar-free."
[Adamidas is drained of Rage. She has lost her voice completely for an IC week following the conclusion of the rite on the 20th. She has 5L.]
[Wyrmbreaker] "Wait," Lukas says. "What were you looking for?"
[descent.] The question gives the gatekeeper pause. He blinks at Wyrmbreaker from behind his thick glasses. "Ask Rain of Brass Petals. Who is not Amanda, but gave me no other name. Who is no cub, but waits to be rescued.
"The truth," he says, tapping his own neck, "stuck in her throat. Big blockage. I got it out, but it wasn't very delicately done. I'm no surgeon," he says, with some apology to his tone.
[Wyrmbreaker] No surgeon, the gatekeeper says. Lukas's eyes flicker down to his bloody, bilious hand. The Ahroun scoffs quietly, humorlessly. Then he returns his regard to the other's face.
"Thank you," he says, then bows his neck: precisely, deeply, respectfully.
He turns to their guide, then. "Do we go on?"
[Rain of Brass Petals] She was blood-and-pile covered, and the Fury would have been so many thing, couldn't say so many things. She just sat, looking as though she had seen a ghost, as though she was trying to process what had just happened.
Do they go on? She looked at the gatekeeper, somewhere between ashamed and something harder to voice-
She could have cost them everything. What if she had failed?
[Truth's Meridian] Katherine finds her limbs her own again, though they come un-stuck slowly; pulling free of stasis as if they'd been stuck in honey; or sap. She flexes her fingers, uncurling them from the fists they'd adopted and attempts to see past the Doctor to the Black Fury; covered in her own blood.
What is not given must be taken -- it was a rite, and every rite had a price, she should know it, should have already. "Will she be alright?" The Philodox asks, her voice husky, needing clearing.
[descent.] Birth of Song looks vaguely disturbed by all this, definitely grossed out. She stares at Adamidas sitting in the examination room, which is becoming more and more insubstantial. Dr. Warren keeps holding out the grape lollipop, then frowns gently. "No?"
He unwraps it and sticks it in his own mouth, and begins to fade from view along with the rest of the building. The sun is overhead, at its zenith. It shines like gold, turns the grass under their feet dry, cracks the ground. It's still now, the branches of the trees untouched by breeze. A hot, dry summer.
Birth of Song nods to Wyrmbreaker, simply, but rolls her eyes at Kate. "Oh, Christ. She's a werewolf." That's the only point she has to make, before she starts to walk forward, putting the third bell away.
[Truth's Meridian] "I didn't mean physically," the Half Moon snaps back, her Rage still unabated from earlier as she begins to follow.
celebration.
9 years ago