The Silver Fang remains Crinos-formed until the great Lune has withdrawn to inform My Mother the Moon and returned with permission, blessings, direction that she should accompany the smaller spirit to find and return the shadow to its chains. Slumber, Charlotte things. Sleep, quiet.
Then she shifts one again, her body melting into the slender, boyish frame to which she was born. A girl, silver-haired, standing dwarfed by the gates of the palace of the moon, with a glowing little hare at her side.
Alice, right?
In something like wonderland.
Charlotte swings her messenger bag across her body and settles it over her thighs, fingers twining with the straps as she Thinks Thinks Thinks.
"I need to know more about the shadow you saw." She is thinking-human-thoughts, suddenly, perhaps nauseatingly aware of how little she does know, but those human thoughts find themselves remade into something comprehensible to the little spirit. "What kind of shadow? Or where did it go? Or who chained it? Or where can we find it?
"Why do you think it will eat us all? All of that. Any of it. So we know where to go, and whom to ask for help."
-ascendance-Having issued the blessings, charge, and dismissal of the Moon, the great Lune steps back. That enormous door swings shut again, that dazzling light shrinking all along its immense edge until it is thin as a handsbreadth, thin as a yardstick, thin as a pencil, thin as a knife's edge,
gone.
Left to themselves on Luna's luminous surface, which in comparison to the light within that palace seems almost dark, the little rabbit-shaped lune straightens from its deep bow and twitches its nose. It seems quite about to berate Charlotte again for being silly, silly, stupid, meat! -- but something stays its tongue this time. It thinks.
"I show you."
It unslings the mortar-and-pestle from its furry back and grips it in its furry little paws and tosses a pawful of something, some bright leaf-thing, from its satchel into the mortar and pounds pounds pounds pounds pounds until the bright leaf-things are bright-dust.
"Here," the little lune says, and throws a handful of dust into Charlotte's eyes. She can feel the particles land, each a tiny zing like soda popping on the tongue. There's no pain, but: at once her vision goes black.
She hears the little lune. Every word, every sentence pulls light out of darkness. Brilliant, simple lines, like prehistoric drawings in the cave of Charlotte's mind, sketching the tale even as the small spirit tells it:
"Meat-wolf can fall into darkness, yes? You know this. Spirit can fall into darkness too. Even big spirits, great spirits, spirits of mighty suns many many many many many far-aways away. When suns fall into darkness they change. They not shine anymore. They become hungry, so hungry. They eat all things, even other suns. So other suns band together. They circle the fallen suns. Keep them locked in. Keep everyone else safe.
"But the fallen suns, like My Mother the Moon, like My Grandfather the Sun, have many many many childrens. These childrens so small, the bright suns not see them. So they not locked in. They get away, go everywhere, make trouble.
"Long long time ago, when I not even me yet, one child-of-fallen-sun came here. It make trouble! It eat everything! So My Mother the Moon sent my mighty elder brothersisters to stop it. They fought for many many turnings, and many many elder brothersisters died, but little by little, by light of Mother, the shadow become small. Small enough to defeat! Small enough to catch. Small enough to put away and lock away and keep away from everyone else.
"Many many many many many many many turnings later, after I become me, shadow escape. I not know where it go. But it still small, and it cunning, and it hungry, and it eat light. It not strong enough to try to eat My Grandfather the Sun. It not strong enough to challenge My Mother the Moon. But it will look for small lights to eat, maybe small childrens of Moon. Maybe small meat-wolves. And if we not find it and lock it away, it become stronger and stronger soon."
Black SheepOh,
she breathes in the dust, which fills her every cell with this sensation of light. The brilliance behind her, the soft face of Luna beneath her feet. The moon who comes and the moon who hides and the moon who comes again, and wrapped in a kind of awe that could feel jagged were it not for the softening light of the moon, she watches as the little spirit shows her what only it saw escape its bonds.
After. After after after, she straightens, rubs her thumb and index fingers together as she considers the glimmering moondust and its soft, inherent glow against her skin.
"Okay." Still quiet. "Ask one of your brothersisters to make a moonbridge to take us back to the Caern. Then, show me where the hungry-sun-spirit was bound. We'll start there. I can try to track it with a rite or a gift, and if that doesn't work we'll track it another way. Or ask a No-Moon to come help.
"Meanwhile I'll try to think of something to bind it into so that it won't escape again."
-ascendance-And so that is what they do:
They call upon a stronger Lune, and they open a moonbridge, and they know the exhilaration of utmost speed once more. Earth, that beautiful blue marble: it grows larger and larger, more and more beautiful, aglow and aglitter in the sharp, dustless darkness of space. What bittersweetness to come home to such a home, and to know that it, like all other aspects of the Gaia-Mother, is under such vicious attack.
They land back in the Caern. Hours or days might have gone by, or little time at all. It is nighttime still, or nighttime again. And the little lune, still glowing-hare-shaped, bounds into the deep shadows with long, haunch-driven lopes. On and on and on they run, wolf and rabbit, girl and spirit, until they reach and cross the edge of the bawn, until they're deep in the dry, brittle wilderness of highland Colorado.
All at once, the little lune stops. They are standing at the lip of a wide, shallow indentation, so old and weatherworn that realmside Charlotte would have never identified as a crater from a meteorite strike. That is what it is, though, and here in the Umbra it still smells faintly of not-from-here; it still pulses with the faintest memory of its fiery descent to earth. And lo: there in the center, a fist-sized hunk of oily-shiny, dark, misshapen rock. If Charlotte looks across the Gauntlet, she finds the same hunk of rock in the realm, though the area has long since smoothed out in rain and wind; has long since overgrown with weeds and detritus.
The little lune sits on its haunches and scratches behind a long ear with a hindpaw.
"When elder sisterbrothers dragged the shadow to My Mother the Moon, she bound it into rock and threw it far far away. The Earth caught it and buried it here for many many many turnings."
Black SheepCharlotte is girl-shaped again and she hunkers down in the center of the crater, examining the hunk of oily-shiny rock, listening with that odd, delicate solemnity to everything the little Lune says. Bows her head after, her pale brows furrowed as she slips her fingers over the piece of rock.
Then picks it up, feels its weight in her hand. She does not have the name of the fallen-sun, but she has its prison and she knows - must know - the way its scent will twist the world, its original nature warped and devoured by a darkness so foul it is hard to conceive or hold.
First, she opens her senses and invokes one of the simplest gifts she knows, to catch the scent of the wyrm in the air. Then, she pulls out from her back a very simple set of implements: an iron needle and a string.
She holds the hunk of meteorite in one hand, the needle dangling from its string in the other, and concentrates, seeking the path of the shadow-that-escaped.
Black SheepSense Wyrm!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Black Sheepwits + rituals for questing stone.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
-ascendance-That hunk of meteorite: it feels cold, and crawl-y, and a little bit slimy. It also feels dead, though. Emptied out. When she stretches out her senses to catch the smell of the Wyrm, she can scent its stink immediately on that rock. And, as she stretches her senses farther, farther --
the needle whips out. It pulls eagerly forward, north-east-ward, toward the city.
"Meat-wolf has idea?" the little lune wants to know. It has found a bit of grass. It is eating grass, its little buckteeth busily chewing. "Meat-wolf knows how to trap shadow?"
Black Sheep"Meat-wolf," returns girl-Charlotte with this small smile that has a tinge of familiarity, even affection, for the little grass-chewing lune There is a store there, about the moon and the earth somehow, but she is not a storyteller and she knows only that the moon changes, and hides her face, and shrouds herself sometimes even in shadow, and then returns. "knows where the shadow is. The needle shows me.
"I don't exactly how to trap the shadow. But I am going to cleanse the rock in which it was imprisoned. Then I am going to follow the rite and go closer and closer until I am so close it will have to come when I call it.
"I'll stay by the river, if I can. And ask the spirits of the river to be ready to help if I need them.
"Then I'll summon the shadow to me, and try to bind it back into its prison.
"That's what meat-wolf is going to do."
Alert, she half-rises then, pulls out a small flask to start a rite of cleasing on the oily, pulsing foulness of the meteorite.
(Rite of Cleansing - dif ??)
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
-ascendance-That thin needle pulls Charlotte onward through the night. At some point, she realizes it's more prudent to run on all fours than to walk. Even then, the journey is long: countless miles passing underfoot as she lopes her tireless wolf's lope toward the city.
It's an overcast night. Realmside, Denver lights up the cloud cover over its heart. It is so bright: the brightest thing for miles. Even in the Umbra it seems made of light, a million glistening strands of spiderweb slung between the shadows of skyscrapers and highrises, each strand aglow from within. No wonder a piece of a fallen star, hungry for light, is drawn to it.
As it runs, the little lune eventually loses its hare's shape. It floats into the air, changes, becomes avian. Small and swift and sure of wing, with a distinctly split tail: a swallow made of silver, shadowing Charlotte's pace.
Eventually, the needle begins to pull harder. And then harder still. And then so hard that Charlotte knows the shadow must be very, very near indeed.
Black Sheepa die!
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Black SheepIt is close.
The girl-wolf bark-whines at the little Lune floating in the air above it. Her head is canted as if she were listening to something no one else can hear, and perhaps she is. But then she shakes her fur out and laps her tongue at the calcified air. Considering. Another half-bite of the fall air, and she can taste the moisture in it. See the silverling gleam of the river's loops curving through the metallic canyons of the city.
We go to the River first. Then find the shadow.
--
And so she does, feeling the tangible, magnetic pull of the needle against her flank, slipping beneath the singing, glowing strands of the weaver's ever-present web to the edge of something older, wilder, stranger, and well-remembered.
The River.
No need to summon the elementals there, though perhaps she must remind them of what and whom and why she is, and so she calls them to come, and listen. Paws in the shallows, great head lowered rather humbly (for a Silver Fang) to the water's gleaming surface, her own lupine face reflected therein.
I am Charlotte Black Sheep, known to you, known by you, known of you. I bring the water from the mountains, clear and clarified, to help you fight the pollution the Wyrm brings to your shores. The spirits of the Platte saved me once, in no-time, or another-time, so I remember them. Remember me now. I go to bind a gaffling or jaggling of the fallen, hungry sun, before it grows and grows and grows to swallow us all. And ask your aid: to cleanse or heal, perhaps even to battle until it is weak enough to be bound back into the prison it escaped during the eclipse.
And offer in return: continued devotion, gnosis, whatever you would ask.
Black SheepCharisma (3) + Enigmas (3) + Pure Breed (4)
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
-ascendance-I become stronger, the little lune replies, to help.
And so it does: shapechanging again, coming out of the sky and landing on the earth, growing fur, growing fangs, growing claws.
It is a cat now. A small, pretty, sleek-furred wildcat all in white, blinking slit-pupilled eyes at Charlotte. Perhaps Charlotte hasn't the heart to tell it how little help it would be in real, pitched battle.
--
Something you should know about water: ever does it change, and ever does it remain the same. Rivers flow. Lakes fill and drain. Seas rise and fall. Rain pours, rain dries away. And through it all, water: mutable, shifting, returning anew. It remembers.
The River remembers Charlotte from that other-time, that no-time. It is a stone's throw away. It reacts to her voice, stronger and more fluid still in the Umbra. Easily, it floods its banks. Silently, it swells and swells and swells, until the current washes past her ankles.
The little lune hisses. It scrambles onto a rock, wraps its tail daintily around its paws, and begins to groom itself.
And the needle: it pulls.
Black SheepShe hasn't the heart; or perhaps she does. The little lune has become stronger, to help. Whatever its part in the coming fight, it was also the only creature that noticed the shadow's escape.
Without the small spirit's attentiveness, the shadow would be left to grow, and grow, and grow.
Charlotte shifts now: larger, to her heavy-shouldered Crinos form. The messenger bag exists here too: a slim piece of ornately tooled leather slung across her massive frame. The tools of her trade secreted within.
One of them: a slingshot, of all things, which she pulls out along with a handful of obsidian stones, which have been worked, and worked, and worked, written with glyphs and sigils, crafted to be employed against the Wyrm.
A moment's concentration to reawaken the talens - two - and then she follows the needle's pull, along the riverbank, the flood in her wake.
[-1 WP to Activate her Healer's Torque (basically a fetish that confers resist pain. 2 Gnosis rolls to activate her modified bane arrows (stones rather than arrows, flung from slingshot, not fired from a bow), and then she'll activate lambent flame. ]
Black SheepTalen 1:
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Black SheepTalen 2:
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
-ascendance-Closer.
Closer.
Closer.
And then, all of a sudden, she is there. A dip in the landscape, a bend in the river, something: the last barriers to line-of-sight fall away, and she sees The Shadow.
Or really: she doesn't see it. No one can see it. It is notable, visible, by its very absence: a being of pure darkness. In comparison, the blackest night is bright as day. In comparison, the deep blackness of space, even, is bright. This thing is black beyond black, blacker than anything Charlotte has ever seen before, so black that her eyes ache for lack of light.
It has latched onto one of the strands of light emanating from the city, and it is feeding. Up until that point, that strand, that pattern-web, is the orderly, fractionated brilliance of an optical cable. Past that point, that strand is only darkness.
As Charlotte approaches, river at her heels, little lune at her back, The Shadow looks at her. She knows it looks at her, because she can feel its limitless, lightless chill straight down in the core of her being. It dislodges from the pattern web. Slowly, smoothly, with the inevitability of its own terrible gravity, it comes toward Charlotte.
She is, after all,
so very bright.
Black SheepCharlotte lifts up the slingshot. It is a lovely slingshot, made for hunting, made for handling, made, even, for hands the size of a Crinos Garou, and she loads and throws first one and then another of her little missives, her little stones, right at the the darkness
pewpew
and then she throws down the now-cleansed stone that was its prison for so-many-years, right into its path. Snaps her jaw and snarls a challenge.
Sinks into hispo and surges forward, the rite and the battle begun.
-ascendance-[soakity!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
-ascendance-[soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
-ascendance-That first missile glances across The Shadow -- seems to tear through the darkness, carve a flaming trail. The edges of the wound burn scintillatingly, the red-orange of embers.
The second missile is simply swallowed whole. It disappears into darkness, as though falling into a very, very, very deep pit, until the eye can no longer follow its path.
Charlotte-the-Hispo snarls a challenge. She surges forward, so brave that the little lune is right on her heels, puffing up, arching its back, hissing. And The Shadow, that inevitable, terrible thing: it simply keeps coming forward. Onward. Nearer and nearer, dreadfully slow, until all at once
it is not slow at all. It is fast, fast as light, fast as darkness. The little lune is there one second, and then
gone. Devoured.
-ascendance-[+2 rage for NOOOOOOOO]
Black SheepThis is both rite and battle. It is a battle-rite and she can feel the surge of rage in her feral body. The full-moon spike of it - which has a tidal kind of certainty. No wonder the moon follows the ocean. Or is it the ocean that follows the moon?
No matter.
This is not merely a thing-of-darkness. It is also a thing-of-substance, of spirit, of will, of rage.
The Silver Fang surges forward and tears into it. Faster than can be seen.
[1a/b split. BITES. Rage 1 + Rage 2: BITES.]
Black Sheep1a. -2.
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Black SheepDamage!
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 7 )
-ascendance-[soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Black SheepSoak! Ack!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Black Sheep1b. BITE.
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Black SheepDamage!
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
-ascendance-There is no satisfying crunch of teeth into flesh and bone. There is no murderously delightful spurt of blood, or even ichor.
Instead, Charlotte's mouth feels numb. Her teeth feel as though they're not there at all. Her strength feels sapped, and sapped further with every bite. She finds herself digging in with her claws to maintain her balance. She feels the devastating pull of The Shadow like a riptide, threatening to drag her in, and away, and down.
[soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Black SheepSOAK!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Black SheepThis whine, deep and raw, at the sensation as it pulls at her, away, away and down. The gravity draws another snarl and she shakes her maw and digs in for purchase and -
Rage 1: BITE.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Black SheepDamage!
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
-ascendance-[soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Black SheepSoak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Black SheepRage 2:
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Black SheepDamage!
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
-ascendance-[OW]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Black SheepSoak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
-ascendance-Is it doing any good? Is she making headway? How does one fight absolute nothingness, anyway?
Charlotte fights like this: with claws. With teeth. With fervor, with valor, with outrage, with fury. She bites and bites and bites at it, tears at it with all her might. She tastes nothing. She feels nothing. She does not know if she is weakening it, though surely she is --
she does know, though, that it is encroaching upon her. That with every bite she tunnels deeper into its nothingness, and now it has oozed around her, it has begun to envelope her.
At her back, the river washes over her numb paws. It reminds her: it is here, it is here. What can it do?
Black SheepPerception 3 + Primal Urge 3
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
-ascendance-[she is making a difference! she can't really see it, but The Shadow is shrinking.]
Black SheepHer flanks heave and her numb mouth lolls and she can feel it, devouring her, eating her, consuming her, pulling her into its endless gravity and it is harder to breathe and harder to feel and harder to think the more she charges the nothing, the more the nothing surges over her, as if it were the unmaker itself.
But she still feels: the water lapping at her ankles, the river washing over her paws. That wakes her. She shakes herself again and -
reaches
and senses the devouring darkness, is shrinking.
Heal me if I fall.
This to the river, panted out, more thought or prayer than anything else. The River saved her before; perhaps it will again.
Then she leaps forward again. There is no more time to question. There is just -
darkness, numbness, the cold kernal of rage inside her body.
[1a/b. BITE and BITE. Rage 1: BITE. Rage 2: BITE.]
Black Sheep1a:
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (5, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Black SheepDamage!
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
-ascendance-[soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Black SheepSoak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Black Sheep1b.
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Black SheepDamage!
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
-ascendance-Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Black SheepSoak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Black SheepRage 1:
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Black SheepDamage!
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )
-ascendance-Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Black SheepSoak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Black SheepRage 2:
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Black SheepDamage!
Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )
-ascendance-Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Black Sheepsoak!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )
-ascendance-Little
by little
by little, she whittles it down. She thins the darkness, makes it flimsy, breakable. Makes it stretched so taut that -- she realizes this suddenly -- even as it envelopes her, even as it covers her ankles, her knees, her waist, her shoulders, her mouth, her ears,
even as it threatens to swallow her entirely: she can see right through it. She can look through it, as though it's not there at all.
One last snap of her teeth. And The Shadow simply ruptures, flailing apart, spinning, tearing, ripping, fluttering. If it could scream, it would. But it can't scream. It is only darkness: collapsing on itself, becoming very very small indeed. Crumpling into a basketball, a tennisball, a golfball, a point of nothingness.
Bindable now. Lock-away-able.
No sign of her little lune, though.
Black SheepOne moment she is being swallowed by darkness. The next she is being devoured by darkness. The next it is collapsing, and she springs back at it begins to fall together, splashing in the ankle deep water, snarl-barking as she does.
There is no triumph. Just a moment where she rears back and begins to rise from her hispo form to her crinos form.
Spirits, she knows, are rarely destroyed. Merely sent to slumber.
So where is her little lune?
--
The water remains.
Cleanse the Blight. Make it give-up the light it stole from My Mother the Moon, who shows her face across your waters every night. Then I will bind it so that it may not escape.
-ascendance-The water remains.
The water washes around her paws; wets her fur; cools her paws. Her sensation begins to return: pins and needles, hot as fire.
The water flows, and it eddies. It speaks in a tongue like smooth stones tumbling in a waterfall:
We will cleanse for you. We remember. For you we will cleanse. But we cannot bring light from darkness. Cannot bring light.
You can. You can enter darkness. Find light. Emerge. We can hold darkness at bay. Prevent its escape. Prevent it from devouring you altogether. But only for a time. Only for a time.
Will you enter?
Black SheepThere's only one answer.
Yes.
- and down the rabbit hole she goes.
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