HERE LEECHY LEECHY LEECH.

Storm's Teeth

"Just Binding and Contrition," Erich replies, a touch guiltily. "I need to learn the Rite of Contrition. I still owe someone a sorry. It's been a really long time."

Storm's Teeth

[Binding and Questing Stone. gak.]

silhouette.

[gak.]

silhouette.

"So why do you know Binding and Questing Stone?" she asks him, ignoring the part about whoever he owes a sorry to. She's sitting up a bit, arms unfolding. "What do you do with them?"

Storm's Teeth

"I don't really use the Rite of Binding anymore," he admits. "Back when I was on my own sometimes I used it to make healing talens for myself. I mean it was kinda tough, I couldn't summon or even talk to spirits so it was usually me splashing around in a pond somewhere chasing down water gafflings that didn't know what I wanted and were probably a little afraid of me.

"And I don't use Questing Stone very often, but I like knowing I have it. In case I have to find someone. Like if one of my packmates got lost or captured or something?"

silhouette.

Chasing down water gafflings.

Sil can't help it. She chokes slightly on a little laugh, lips pressed together, envisioning this tall, long-limbed Fenrir-born guy splashing around in ponds trying to get spirits to get anywhere near him just so he could survive. Spirits that were made for healing and peace, spirits he needed to help him.

She knows why he doesn't use that one much anymore, because she knows of Black Sheep, the pink-haired Fang who everyone heard about after she summoned a host of the dead to fight the Beloved Horror in vengeance.

But she shakes her head. "There are lot of other things for an Ahroun to do with the Rite of Binding that don't involve traumatizing poor water spirits that can barely stand being near us," she says. "You ever heard of a Bloody Bandage?"

Storm's Teeth

That little laugh doesn't offend Erich. If anything, it puts him a little more at ease -- sketches a quick, relieved little grin across his face, glad that she wasn't horrified or disgusted by his spiritual incompetence.

"Yeah," he's heard of it. "I never learned how to make one though. Doesn't it involve like... a lot of blood and leech spirits? I guess maybe Charlotte can help me summon some leech spirits, 'cause I wouldn't even know where to go to find them."

silhouette.

"All your blood," she corrects. Not a lot of blood. Basically all of it. As much as you can bleed. "But if you find them, or summon them, how are you gonna make 'em help you?"

She stands up abruptly, walking over to the vending machine. "You can't talk to spirits. I've never heard of anyone but a Theurge or Uktena knowing how, and the spirits that teach the gift don't seem inclined to let anyone else in on it, and I don't think it'll be easy to find a Theurge or Uktena who will teach you themselves."

Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out some change, a wrinkled bill, smoothing it on the edge of the machine as she talks.

"And plenty of spirits are too skittish to get near us, especially as our rage spikes up. But we still have to. I mean, you may have a packmate now who's baller with spirits, but you know you're gonna need to be able to work with them even when she's not around or whatever. Also, she's not around like... now. And,"

Silhouette is getting a Dr. Pepper.

"...you're gonna need to figure it out. Cuz you're gonna learn to make a bloody bandage. By yourself."

Storm's Teeth

Figure it out. By yourself. Right now.

Erich couldn't look more thunderstruck if he tried. He sits bolt upright in that chair of his while Sil goes to get herself a Dr. Pepper. A hand rises up behind his neck; he gives himself an awkward, time-buying sort of head-scritch.

"Uh," an auspicious start, "any chance you might be able to point me at some leech spirits? Or am I totally on my own here?"

silhouette.

Well, he has to learn how to make one by himself -- but that's not quite the same as having to learn, by himself, how to make one. Slight difference, and one that might become clearer as she cracks open her can of soda and walks back over to him. Frowns at him.

"Use your head, man. Where do you usually find the spirit of a thing that exists in a real place?"

Storm's Teeth

"Where the real things are, obviously," Erich replies, "but where the hell do real leeches live, anyway? I thought they were like... swamp things. That live in the south. Where it's warm?" He thinks a moment. "Wait, maybe we can find some at the zoo."

silhouette.

Sil shrugs. "They're in cold bodies of water, too. Like the reservoir we just passed. Spirits also like congregating where there's a lot of spiritual energy."

She sips her Dr. Pepper. "Like near caerns."

Storm's Teeth

"So... maybe if we go find a cold pond in the middle of the Caern, and then I bled a lot, some might show up." Erich gets up. "Cool, let's go."

Storm's Teeth

[dlp!]

Storm's Teeth

"Oh." Well, Erich feels a little silly. "I didn't know that. About cold water. Anyway," he gets up, "let's go back to the reservoir, then. Do you wanna just run?"

silhouette.

Sil shrugs. "You're the one with cuts and burns right now, let's go for it." She chugs the rest of her Dr. Pepper, tossing the can into the provided recycling bin. She heads out into the icy night air with him, taking a deep breath.

"You're gonna need something to use as bandages," she tells him. "The bleeding is sorta how you coax the leech to bind into the bandage that's soaking up your blood. If you just bleed out all over the place before you can get them to bind with you, they might be like cool, score. But you'll be unconscious and they'll just dine and dash. And just... word to the wise: there's a time and place to force a spirit into a binding. But with this type of talen, with a bandage you slap on to your skin, you don't want a pissed-off leech waking up and deciding it'll suck you dry instead of helping you out, you know?"

Storm's Teeth

"Pffft," it's a bravado so over-the-top that Silhouette can't possibly mistake it for anything but a joke, "they're just scratches. Anyway," this is more serious, "sometimes after driving around a lot it's nice to feel the ground under your paws."

They leave the shelter of the visitor's center. He heads the way into the darkness and the wilderness, the frost-strewn ground crunching under his soles. She tells him he'll need something to use as bandages, and he mentally bids a fond farewell to his socks. Cool, score makes him laugh aloud, short and quick.

"Yeah," he agrees. "And thanks. For the tips. And like, for teaching me."

He starts to drop onto all fours, then. Pauses -- "Ready?" -- and of course she is. So of course he hits the ground, hands becoming paws, a dappled, shaggy-furred grey wolf, his pelt thick for winter, his eyes bright. Cut and burnt or not, he sets off in a steady lope, favoring one forepaw just a titch as he goes.

silhouette.

She doesn't say it aloud, but Silhouette agrees. So after they've walked a bit from the visitor's center, they both slide down into lupus, one a gleaming black shadow with golden eyes, the other shaggy and dappled-gray. His lack of breeding -- or rather, the wrong kind of breeding -- shows in his body even now. He can't hide from it. Points for not really trying, though.

So they run, Silhouette keeping pace with him though it's clear she could outstrip him by miles if she really wanted to. She doesn't want to. That isn't what wolves running together is about. You don't survive if you act like that. You're acting more like a man than a wolf when you focus overmuch on domination.

It is late enough, and they are safe within the bawn, so they don't shift. They don't cross over. They skitter down the slope from the road to the southernmost rim of the reservoir, which is still as glass right now. There isn't any wind, which is a blessing: it's too cold to bear much more. It's cold enough that, yes, the edges have a film of ice.

Silhouette lopes east, then west, making a small pacing circle for no reason but to feel her body around her. She shakes her fur, sniffs at the air, and then peers past the ice into a spot of actual water. Her head tips, and she moves forward a bit, and

the world around her ripples slightly, the edges of those ripples turning a pale sunset pink and vivid summer green and dawn-sky blue. The colors are barely seen before they are gone again, and Silhouette with them.

Storm's Teeth

There's no wind. No moon and no stars, either. A cloudy night, the sky overhead veiled; in the direction of the city, they can see the glow of those artificial lights off the undersides of those clouds.

Silhouette disappears as easily as breathing. Even here, close to the heart of the Caern, it takes Erich a little work to get across. He makes it a few seconds after she does, slamming through from one world to the other, trailing a shimmering mist of snapped spiderwebs.

On the other side, the dappled-grey wolf spreads his paws and shakes his fur out. A few flecks of blood go flying along with spiderwebs and loose fur. He shifts back to his man-shape, then, crouching down at the lake's edge. It is not so cold on this side, if only because the cold itself takes on spiritual presence: ice-spirits and frost-spirits and winter-spirits skimming the edges of the lake, tracing across the sky. The moon is visible here, enormous, so close that it feels like they could reach up and touch it.

And they can. If they reached up. If they leapt up, allowed their minds to forget gravity; if they traveled through the Aetherial Realm, faster than sound and faster than light.

That's not where they're going tonight, though. Tonight, Erich is decidedly earthbound. At the lake's edge he pulls his shoes off and then his socks. He rips his socks to little strips, each one two or three inches wide and long enough to wrap around his palm once. He lays those strips out all in a row, neatly, maybe half a dozen in all. He gets his pocketknife out too, unfolding it and setting it beside the strips.

Then he moves from a crouch to a crosslegged sit. Something stable. He casts Silhouette a single, self-conscious glance.

Then, feeling rather like a disturbed teenager, he opens the veins of his wrist. Not deeply; not yet. A shallow cut, enough to let blood pool and then trickle. He holds his wrist over the fabric strips. And then -- feeling like an absurd, ridiculous disturbed teenager, he calls quietly across the lake:

"Here, leechy-leechy-leech. Here, leeches. Fresh blood. Come get your fresh blood, leechy-leech."

silhouette.

Silhouette crosses over with ease. She was taught by a Theurge of their tribe. She is probably the only Ahroun of their tribe who would want to test his communion with spirits as part of his challenge for rank. But she is waiting there for him when he arrives, still in lupus, standing near the water's edge.

He shifts to homid, but she remains as she is. She has a tendency to talk more than a lot of their moon. She knows that. Sometimes not being in homid helps her say less than what feels right. She hangs back now, as she did when he was fighting, watching him as he creates some bandages from his socks of all things. Watching him as he takes out his knife and sits on the ground. Looking right back at him, head cocked, as he looks at her.

One wrist fills the air, suddenly, with the smell of fresh blood. It's more immediately noticable here. Silhouette's nostrils flare. Erich starts letting the blood drip onto the bandages before him. He calls to leeches by name, in his human man-voice. Silhouette chuffs a breath out; when he looks at her, she gives a single slow shake of her head.

Silence.

--

The slow drip is taking a long time. Some of the blood is already drying on one of the bandages. No leeches have come.

Storm's Teeth

Storm's Teeth

[wtf.]

Storm's Teeth

No leeches. Okay. So maybe he's not doing this right. He thinks about it; what exactly was it Charlotte did to summon spirits? She'd use something to entice them. And she'd call to them, obviously, in the tongue of the spirits. Which he doesn't have. So that's out. And as for something to entice them: well, he has his blood. Which isn't doing much good.

Except: the leeches don't live up here on the land. In the dirt. They live in the water. So maybe that's it. Maybe he needs to be in the water.

Erich gets up, using his good hand for balance. It occurs to him that hell, he didn't even need to make a new wound. He has plenty of those already. He makes his way down to the water's edge and, after a moment's pause, steps into it. One foot at a time, gingerly. It's not as cold as he feared, though still colder than he'd like. Still: he moves into the water, deeper, letting it wash up to his calves, his thighs, his waist.

And he dips his bleeding wrist into the lake. "Heeeere, leeches." He's muttering under his breath now. "C'mere, you little bloodsuckers."

silhouette.

[roll wits + enigmas!]

Storm's Teeth

[OKAY BORROWING A LIL TOTEMIC HALP NOW. +1 to wits.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

silhouette.

Erich has to break through some of the frosted-over ice to get into the water. And it

is

freezing. It's cold enough that a human being submitting themselves to that would be doing something squarely in the Fucking Stupid category. We could discuss how Erich's genitals and other extremities are reacting to this decision, but we won't. This is a family show (it's totally not). It's cold out there. And he goes out farther than he needs to, but Silhouette will tell him that later. She'll explain later, whether he fails or succeeds, because it's not about watching him squirm: it's about getting done what needs to be done.

--

Erich is figuring out what needs to be done. And it starts to make sense to him as his toes and knees freeze up, as his blood drips into the water.

It's not about calling to the leeches who can't understand him anyway; his voice means nothing to them but noise.

It's not about how deep he goes into their territory -- their dark, cold territory.

It's about the blood.

The blood is what they want. And if he wants them in those strips of smelly sock -- especially because they aren't prepared bandages, they aren't clean, they aren't holy, they smell and they're ragged and aren't great homes to begin with -- then he's going to have to make those strips of sock damn near irresistable. Which won't happen if a few drops have already started to dry out by the time fresh wet ones appear. He has to drench them with blood, soak them with it, soak them so much that the water won't even be able to clean them if he were to drop them.

He has to offer them more blood. A trickle isn't going to (pardon the pun) cut it.

Storm's Teeth

Sometime in the midst of that icy torment, standing waist-deep in the water watching his blood wisp lazily into the still lake, Erich

has

an epiphany.

See, he was trying to lure the leeches, or something. He was trying to let a little blood seep out into the water, thinking they'd come sniffing. And then he could draw them onto the shore, and there, dump blood into the bandages and get them to... dive in. Or something. But they're not sharks. They're not pirahnas. They don't patrol the waters waiting for someone to offer up a sniff of blood.

They're leeches. They're the spirits of leeches, which exist to suck blood. And he isn't baiting them; he's offering chiminage. It's different. It's totally different.

So: he comes splashing and wading up out of the lake. It's quite sudden, actually, a flurry of motion so extreme and out of the blue that Silhouette might think for a moment that a pirahna-spirit really had gotten ahold of him. But no: it's just Erich, splashing ashore, shivering violently, gasping something only barely coherent about I get it! I've got it! before thumping down on his knees and

sawing at his wrist with that knife, opening veins and arteries and everything, oh god it's gross, there's blood everywhere, he cheerfully and readily drenches those smelly-sock bandages of his.

"COME ON, LEECHES!" he yells across the lake, nevermind that they can't understand him: yelling for the sake of it, jubilant, eureka. "COME AND GET IT. YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY. BLOOOOOD!"

silhouette.

The mind is a wonderful, magical thing. Like the universe, it has no edge, no real boundary. It can conceptualize a universe, it can imagine eternity. It creates and destroys gods. It seeks out its own nourishment and growth. It can hold the possibility of things greater than itself, more evolved, of a higher nature, despite the fac that the human mind has no peer on this planet.

Erich's mind is no joke. He doesn't think he's super smart, he didn't get to really finish school, and one of his best friends is legitimately genius-level intelligent, even if they only notice this in bursts of analytical thought pouring from her mouth. But he's not a dummy. He's not, by any means, a slouch.

It hits him. Leeches aren't pirahnas, and he isn't trying to bait a live creature, he's offering chiminage to a spirit.

His boisterous yelling is just what he does, even though it does no good; it has nothing to do with what happens next. Silhouette is standing back, a bit upslope, watching. He seems so happy as he cuts, again and again, back and forth, digging in. His homid body feels it, even if the pain is dampened by his gifts. It really does not take long for him to start feeling woozy, dizzy, his extremities clammy and not just because of the reservoir's water.

By then, in the dim light, he can see small black things coming up out of the water, though their counterparts do not like to do so. Some are small, others large and seeming already engorged with blood. They are black, and yet all of them have a faint red sheen beneath that dark surface, a ripple of color hinting at their hunger. They come for the bandages, only when the bandages are so sopping wet that the ground beneath them is pooling.

The leech-spirits grow as they suck in the blood. They throb as they creep towards and onto the sock-bandages. They drink, and drink, and drink, as Erich

bleeds,

and bleeds,

and bleeds.

silhouette.

[time to roll that rite o' binding!]

Storm's Teeth

[okay... spending 3 gnosis! saving one for crossing back.]

Storm's Teeth

Some of his fingers are dangling limp. Most of them are numb. He's severed vessels, nerves, tendons; the blade of the pocketknife is sticky with blood by the time he drops it on the lakeside sand. The strips of old-sock are sticky with blood too, hot with it and then cooling with it, congealing with it. His head is light, and then his other hand is braced against the sand, and he doesn't even remember putting it down but he must have, and

Erich laughs. He laughs at those ugly, slimy little things squirming up from the lake; he pets one with strengthless fingers even as it wiggles away from him and toward the feast laid out for it. "Oh, you ugly little monsters," he says, laughing still, fond and loving, "oh, you disgusting, gross, squirmy little shits. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. Thanks for coming, really, you're so gross, yuck, thank you. Thank you."

And now his head is drooping. And now his eyes are heavy. And now he's not shouting anymore but whispering, and he's about to faceplant, and

the time is now. The air around him lights up, liminal and luminescent; the essence of his spirit adds to the feast. He takes a deep breath. Gathers the scraps of his will. Gathers the wiggling, jiggling little monsters gently in the cup of his palm and herds them, pushes them, presses them toward the bandages,

and into them.

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

silhouette.

Gravel and sand and grass and snow mix together with Erich's blood. He laughs, blood flowing, pouring out of him. He cannot entirely feel the leech he tries to stroke. It shudders away from his touch but does not stop feasting on his blood, sucking, growing larger with the rest of the squirming, slimy, crawling brood. They are disgusting. There's a reason why 'leech' is an insult to give to a human, and a word for disgusting vampires among the Garou.

He thinks he is saying thank you over and over and calling them gross and yuck, but only about half the words are coherent. He's slurring them together as he's lying down, urging the leeches onto the bandages. He doesn't need to; they follow the flow of the blood not to its source now but to the destination. They follow the ritual into the sticky wet fabric, they begin to sink into the blood and the bandages even as the are drinking, drinking.

Erich is blacking out. He is watching them disappear into the bandages, watching as the edges of those bits-o-sock turn black and as the blood in them dries far too quickly, stiffens -- but he is unconscious long before they harden into flat sheets. The leeches not bound into service mop up the rest of his willingly-given blood and then slide, satisfied, back into the lake, making the water glow faintly red for a while. There's a reason there are so man leeches in this reservoir; the Keeper of the Land cares for them, and Erich is not the first Ahroun to bleed out on this patch of earth.

--

A while later, he wakes up. He is wounded but healing. He still has his wounds from the fight earlier. He still has that nasty series of sawed-deep cuts on his arm, but he can feel it starting to close itself. He and Silhouette are still by the water, still in the penumbra. Beside him is a row of bandages, rust-red and stiff as cardboard, each one pulsing gently with the spiritual life inside of it.

Silhouette chuffs a breath from her nostrils as he starts to stir. It seems to say: All right.

Storm's Teeth

The world seems sideways for a moment. A miraculous affair of vertical water that does not fall; trees that grow horizontally. Then Erich understands he has slumped over sideways.

He has bandages. A row of them. All six of those folded-over strips of oldsock now stiffened and rust-red. They look a little like fruit roll-ups unrolled or something like that, and groggy, he reaches over and pulls one to himself and puts the end in his mouth.

crunch.

Nope. No, that's not how they work. He mutters something to the effect, and pushes it back beside the others, and pushes himself upright -- the world spins -- he shifts into a larger shape, hairy and primordial, all jutting jaw and jutting teeth. The cuts on his arm close much, much faster. His stomach growls and his bones ache intensely for a moment, the marrow expanding, an enormous cohort of fresh-formed blood cells dumping into his arteries.

Silhouette chuffs. Erich shakes his head to clear it. He picks up his precious little bandages and clutches them in both hands, looking a bit silly -- like some country bumpkin holding a winning lottery ticket. And he laughs a little, wonderingly.

"Thanks," he says, this time to Silhouette. "I mean. You really taught me something useful."

silhouette.

Silhouette has no idea why he tries to eat a bloody bandage. For one: ew. For two: dude, no. That's not how they work.

She just shakes her head, making a whining noise that is actually laughter. She wags her tail low, walking over and circling him a bit as he tries to figure it out. It's like any other talen, though, and he'll figure that out. He doesn't waste one, she notices, on healing himself right now. He just shifts, and he tries to shake his head to clear it... which has the opposite of the desired effect, instead making the world tip and spin a bit more than it should be.

He tells her thanks. She just chuffs a breath out,

don't mention it, and nods up the hill.

They have one more test.

Storm's Teeth

One more test.

Erich tucks those bloody bandages into his pocket. Later on he'll stash them with the little gaiasbreath talens Charlotte made for him, but for now his pocket will do. Sticking his bare feet back in his shoes, he follows Silhouette up the hill. At least once, and possibly more than once, he loses his footing and ends up scrambling on all fours to keep from sliding down.

With every step he feels stronger, though. With every step his blood flows thicker, his wounds close, his head clears.