The Mad God, Chapter 1
My name is Jiman Lloyd, but people call me 'The Doctor'. It's part of a long running joke. I have a medical doctorate, but I hate everyone and everything that moves, people say that I have a Doctorate of Hate. But I'd be willing to bet that all the Metis hate everything that lives, because everything that lives hates us, even Victor, the other Metis in the pack, probably feels that way. That's just how us Metis are, though. We're exiles because our existence violates the Litany.
Don't ask what I am. I'm gonna tell you, but I don't expect you to believe it. Before all this happened, I wouldn't have believed it myself, well, most Garou, that's what we call ourselves, wouldn't, I grew up among our kind. I'm a werewolf. See? I told you that you weren't gonna believe me. Don't try and hide that disbelief, I know it's there, I've seen my true form, my Crinos form, drive people mad. Even the most determined of medics snaps like tinder wood when they see a creature that's half man, half wolf. Bones also snap like tinder wood when you're in Crinos. Of course, there's obviously some downside to these gifts, that's a society that has no margin for errors. You're assigned a place in it when you're born, and after that, you have to live with it. It doesn't matter how much you like it. Most tribes let you switch. Not my tribe, not the Stargazers. Oh well, I suppose I'm decent enough at what I'm supposed to do. I'm a Ragabash. That means I'm the trickster. I do my job differently than most people, though. My 'tricks' hurt if you if you don't notice them, it keeps you alert and paying attention to the world around you, so the point is still accomplished.
The Stargazers, my tribe, are no longer part of the Garou Nation, we left it a long time ago when we decided that its needs were not our own. I've come back to the Nation, though. I'm with a pack now, though our pack's name eludes me, I remember that our totem (that's the spirit that gives power to the pack) was, and still is, Momentum. It took all the money that the sept, a place where Garou gather, usually built upon a caern, back in South Korea had to fly me out here to the USA, but it was necessary. The elders foresaw that I would be needed out here, so I came. I was only 12, by human standards, when I came. I always got weird looks, but I suppose that's because I have a set of ram's horns on my head. They're there because my damned parents broke the litany (the laws of Garou society) and mated, they were both Garou, Garou blood must be watered down or it unerringly creates some defect in the child, who is a Metis. Not to mention the fact that a young Metis is born in Crinos form and usually claws its way out of its mother's womb. Regardless, I never fit in. When I was 14, I burned my high school to the ground in anger, on a weekend, though; I didn't want anyone to actually be hurt. I didn't get out of jail until I was 25. Then I joined up with this pack.
We were sitting in a nightclub when all this began, one week ago, in fact. On reflection, we really should have been doing our monthly sept duties, but we were sitting at a bar listening to the German band on stage. Victor wasn't there, though. We were wearing the black leather trench coats that our pack uses as standard issue, they're good for concealing things that you would rather not have people notice and can withstand a bit of punishment before tearing, though not much. Then some guy, also in a black trench coat, walk out back with his date, most likely to rape her. Black trench coats, drugs, violence, and rape are disgustingly common around here; the first one is only disgusting because they look so hideous. A glass of beer and a song later, we heard a scream from the alleyway behind the nightclub, I guessed that I had been right, and that the guy in the trench coat and sunglasses had raped her. We, that is the pack and I, went out back, maybe if we could bring this guy down, we could have an excuse as to why we hadn't been at the sept and doing routine chores like automatons.
When we got into the alley, I found that I had been wrong. She was lying on the ground bleeding from two little holes in her neck. I quickly diagnosed this; there is some use to having a doctorate, after all, and used part of my trench coat sleeve and the string from the hem to create a makeshift bandage. I checked her pulse; it was still there, so she hadn't entirely become one of those things, those Wyrm[1] servants yet. I don't think she survived through the night. It was then that a clang sounded from the fire escape on the building on the other side of the alley. We climbed up the fire escape to chase after the shadow that had just darted up onto the roof, except for Jack "the ripper" London, he went in the opposite direction. Oh well, Jack's an Ahroun, that means he's a warrior, his war- ish-ness is enhanced by his belonging to the Get of Fenris tribe. He was born to one Garou and one wolf, so he's called a Lupus. He's none too bright either.
The dying girl was able to rasp out one word as she died, it was "Mark". I'm not sure whether it was a name or if she was referring to a symbol of some sort, and we didn't have enough time to hang around and figure out what she meant. You tend not to have much time when a leech, that's what some of us call vampires, is hunting, it's never very safe to be around a leech, whether they're hunting or not.
It was about this time that I noticed that I didn't see Ryan Magee, the Theurge, or seer, of the pack. He's one of the Children of Gaia, the Children believe in peace, with the determination of a martyr. I have to admire them for being strong enough to hold this belief, especially when the Final Days are upon us, the days when the Final Battle of the Apocalypse will be any day now, the Prophecies of Phoenix are here, and yet they cry for peace. If you ask me, I'd say that any Child worth his salt is stronger than the toughest Get. Maybe the Get would win in combat, but he's just too afraid of peace and to unsure of his strength to call for peace, not like the Children. The Get let their bodies go to their heads. I bet that there's never been a single Get who paused to think of the Apocalypse as something other than the end. Not one who's contemplated if maybe it's not an end, so much as it is just a new beginning. I wasn't sure where Ryan was, I assumed that he was in the Umbra, or Spirit World, he sometimes shifts between our world and the Umbra when he doesn't want to, it just kinda happens on occasion. I heard some huffing as Jack caught up with us. Jack was now in Crinos, a rather risky thing to be doing during a rooftop chase across a metropolis. If a human sees a Crinos, he's usually driven stark raving mad. Victor Twiddle, the other Metis, suffers from periods of complete insanity, though not because he has seen a Garou, he is one for Gaia's sake, but because he's Metis.
A crash resounded through the air as the shadowy thing jumped through a stained-glass window of the old gothic cathedral, it was abandoned several years ago, though I don't know why. We didn't want to announce our entrance quite so loudly, so we hopped down to the ground and walked over to the front door. It was locked, just as I had suspected that it would be. Archeon opened the door for us with what he likes to call "unconventional methods", that means he picked the lock. I think Archeon is a stage-name of sorts, I call 'em hunt names, quite a few of us use 'em, I go by "Hates-the- world", Ryan goes by "Dark-Hunter", and Jack goes by "Jack the Ripper". Archeon is a Homid, which means one of his parents was Garou and the other was a human. He's a Philodox, the mediator. He's a member of the Shadow Lords, I don't trust the Lords. They always have some sort of scheme up their sleeve. The only reason I'm in a pack with one is because Ryan, the Child, schemes as well, and he can counter anything that Archeon does. It took him about five minutes to pick the lock, that was too long if you ask me.
When we finally got into the cathedral, there was no sign of our prey. There were rows of empty pews, a balcony that looked as though nobody had been on it since the cathedral had been shut down. The whole place seemed to be coated with dust, except for the pulpit and the area behind it. We went back there, as it was the only place that seems to have felt footfall since this place was closed. We found no evidence there as to where the leech had gone. We stood around for a while, before I kicked the rug behind the podium out of spite. There was an area underneath it where there had been some cuts in the stone flooring in the shape of a square, it had been filled in with some other kind of stone after it was cut, it was a bit lighter than the rest of the floor. Jack, in his amazing Get intelligence, punched the stone and nearly broke his hand. He pulled the sword out of this trench coat and tried prying it open; the sword nearly broke as well. It was then that I noticed that Ryan was among us again, Wyld he scares me when he just appears out of nowhere, it makes the fur on my neck stand on end.
An idea then came to me, I placed my hand on the 'panel' and channeled the force of the Umbra to open it, and, surly enough, it popped open. I silently thanked Gaia for remembering that I had gotten a raccoon- spirit to teach me that Gift, or supernatural power. We slowly descended the ladder that was below.
There was an open room before us, a bleak, utilitarian, grey cement room. The room was roughly diamond shaped. We walked forward for about twenty feet before two pathways branched off of the room we were in. Jack and Paul Monteford, another Ahroun and a member of the Silent Striders tribe, went into the room on the right; the rest of us took left. As we entered the room, we saw a man in brown robes kneeling before a statue of a man with bat wings and six arms. The statue was the same lifeless grey as the rest of the complex, for lack of a better term. He placed the broken hilt of a sword at the base of the statue. He lifted his head as Ryan's heavy boots hit the floor. He stood up, keeping his right hand pressed against his heart all the while. Archeon took out his pistol, that's when this 'cultist', I can't think what else to describe him as, lowered his hand and a mace slid down his arm and he caught it as the grip graced his palm. The hooded figure walked silently towards us. When he got close to Archeon, he raised the mace, showing no sign of tension. It was about then that Ryan shot him in the back with his pistol. Paul walked over to the statue and stared at it for a while, as though transfixed. It was amazing, now that I had the time to look at it, how the elegance and complexity of the statue contrasted so harshly with the utilitarian grey that it was sculpted of. Paul then picked up the hilt at the statue's feet and stared at it. The handle was made with an intertwining pattern of gold, silver, and iron, with a mother-of-pearl streak running down the middle, the safety- guard, I don't know what else to call it, you know, the thing that separates the pommel from the blade, was the shape of a crescent moon with the points facing towards were the blade would go.
We turned around and saw a door at the back of the room; it was made of drab, rusted iron. Whoever owned this place really needed to hire an interior decorator, I found the bleak walls and demented statues quite tasteless. The door moaned as it opened. A dark hallway stretched on before our pack, lit only by the torches that gave the place an eerie glow, they were everywhere down here. As we arrived at the end of the passage there was a turn to the right, when we stepped through the sound of automatic fire echoed through the bleak, silent corridors. The three 'cultists' might have proved more challenging had I not pulled out the SMG that Victor was letting me use in his absence and strafed 'em all. Archeon went over and grabbed the hooded guy's SMG while I loaded a new clip into mine, he checked his and found that it was empty, I tossed him a full clip and noticed that his gun was of lesser quality than Victor's.
We wandered back into the main hall, Paul and Jack hadn't found anything, the room that they had checked had been full of empty crates, they were about to follow after us, or so they said, until they heard the automatic fire and decided that they didn't want to get pumped full of lead. You can't blame 'em for not wanting to get shot, I suppose. We went forward, the bleak walls seemed to be draining our souls. Well, not really, but that makes it sound impressive and they did kinda get us bored and not want to finish this. We opened the door at the end of the hall, now tilting up and to the left of the ladder that had led us here.
Howls of other Garou rang through the air as we opened the door; in the room that it sheltered were two Garou in Crinos, their brown fur glistening with sweat and Wyld-knows-what-else in the torchlight. They cried out in the ancient tongue of the Garou, they shouted for us to join them, commanded us to dance the Black Spiral. These were Black Spiral Dancers, members of the fallen Garou tribe. Long ago, they were known as the White Howlers, as their rite of initiation, they would have cubs go run through part of the Black Spiral. Eventually, the Wyrm grew tired of these incessant taunts; he conquered and corrupted the White Howlers, making them into the Black Spiral Dancers. This problem was solved in a slightly different manner than or last one. We pulled out our swords and decided to face these Garou in melee, as the bullets would not do much against them.
Jack stood his ground for a moment; he then placed his sword back inside his trench coat and took out a pair of knives to fight with. He took careful aim with the first, and released it. The blade danced through the air for a moment before it struck the wall. He threw the other in frustration and it hit one of the Dancers in the eye. He then pulled his sword (he likes to call it Ol' Slahy) out of his coat again. I raised my blade to defend against an attack that was about to reduce my face to a pile of ribbons on the floor, I'm glad that I blocked, I'm sure that the smell of ribbons of flesh would have thoroughly disgusted me. I swung up and severed the head of the first of the fallen Garou. The second one was lunging for Ryan when he rolled out of the way and put his blade through its brain. As it fell, he removed the ring from its finger.
We proceeded on, fairly certain that those Spiral Dancers wouldn't be bothering us anymore. The next few rooms were uneventful, though quite lacking in decorum, as was the rest of this 'dungeon'. The owner could have, at the very least, painted the walls or something, or maybe scribbled a few things in blood to make it more horrifying. But, I suppose that the emptiness was, in its own way, rather frightening. We ran across another of the figures, but he was easily taken care of after a few swings of our swords. There was a large iron door at the end of the hall that the cultist had been in. Upon it these words were inscribed: "Place here the circle of the bringer of day". None of us knew what it meant until Ryan looked at the ring he had taken from the Spiral. Upon it was emblazoned a small sun. He placed it in the small, circular indentation in the door and it slid open.
The passage way continued on for a bit longer before it turned down and to the right. The walls were their usual hollow, emotionless, unadorned concrete. It was odd that, after having my life put in danger here twice, the bleak walls were becoming slightly comforting, they were always there, they were constant. eternal. they would not let me down. We entered the first room, after proceeding down this new hallway for about forty feet or so. I was walking in front of the rest of the pack, that's what did me in. As I stepped into the room, I felt cold hands placed upon my shoulders, then, a brief, piercing pain at two points on my neck. Then, a wave of pure euphoria washed over my body, flowed by one of agony. In rage and pain, I threw the cultist against the far wall. His spine snapped, I know that 'cause I heard it. The wall caved in behind him, revealing a secret passage of sorts. The passage was made of uncut stone. At the end was a round chamber with a small reflecting pond in the middle. I can't imagine why anyone would want to seal this place off. I saw something shine at the bottom of the pool and dived down to try and pull it out. It was a blade, not a full sword, but just the blade. I imagined that it went with the hilt that Paul had found and handed it to him. We returned to the main room, I made a point of smashing the skull of the moron who had bitten me with my foot as we came out of the cave in the wall. We went down a narrow passage for about thirty feet before we came across the next room. There were four of the cultists in this room; two of them pulled out guns while the others revealed maces in much the same manner as the first one that we had fought.
This time, it wasn't us who opened fire. One of them shot me in the chest, rather, he shot at my chest. The bullet ended up getting lodged in my hideous trench coat. I reached out for the nearest one and smacked the mace out of his hand. He then latched onto Ryan like the other one had latched onto me. Ryan tossed his pistol from his right to his left hand and pointed it at the face of the freak that had grabbed him. His body tensed as the cultist neared his neck. I know from my own experience that the thing's breath smelled of decay. Ryan desperately pulled the trigger and the thing's head splattered into probably about seven or eight pieces. Jack grabbed another one and slammed his head into the wall with all of the force that an angry werewolf n Crinos can muster, and that's a Hell of a lot. Paul emptied a few .44 magnum rounds into the third of the hooded things and watched the flesh and blood spray out of the wounds that tore through the chest of the man, if something that goes around biting your neck can really be called a man. The last was disposed of by Archeon after a few slashes with his sword. We walked down the empty, soulless passage for about another twenty-five feet before we arrived at the ladder that took us farther down into the depths of that Hellhole.
The grand room that laws then before us was different than the others in that catacomb, it was decorated. The art was a disturbing mural showing people being mutilated by a bear on the left wall. The right wall had a mural of a metallic dog sending out electricity and tearing a man's throat out. We steeled ourselves as we opened the grand, forbidding iron doors that lay at the end of the room opposite the ladder. In the room on the other side was a small, iron statue of a dog facing a giant bear that appeared to be preserved through taxidermy. Flesh, spinal cords, and many an assorted organ were strewn about the room. How could a stuffed bear and an electric dog (if the mural was right) have killed that many things?
We walked to the other end of the room. The doors were firmly shut. I went over to the 'dog' and kicked it out of spite, that's when things turned to Hell. Electricity began to course through the dog, hey, the mural was right, and I felt a surge of electricity and a stabbing pain in my ankle. I looked down and noticed that the dog was biting my foot. I shook my leg violently for a while before the dog finally came off; it took a good chunk of my flesh with it. Archeon tried shooting the dog, but the bullets just bounced off of the metal smoothness. We thought for a moment about using swords, but the fact that this dog was electric discouraged us from attempting this. It was then that Paul had an idea, those are rather rare for him. He took the blade that he had found earlier and threw it into the dog. It seemed like a good idea, because all of the electricity channeled out of the dog, but where it went was even more of a problem than the dog had been. The energy went straight into the bear standing inert opposite the dog.
The bear let out a growl as it lunged towards me with, if you'll pardon the pun, newfound energy. Archeon tried to empty a spray of automatic fire into it, only to discover that his SMG was empty. I tried mine, but the magazine was empty on that too. I ejected it and started running backwards to avoid the thing. I shouted at my packmates to cover me while I reloaded me gun. It took me a moment of nervous fumbling to find the magazine and load it into my SMG. I shouted a command to move out of the way, and they seemed to hear me, either that or they had had enough of dealing with the bear. I pointed my gun and held the trigger down. Rejoicing in the carnage that spewed from the gigantic grizzly. I found myself screaming obscene words at the thing as it fell. We slung the heavy iron doors open, we were all shaking slightly. The thing had mauled Archeon pretty badly. Ryan had used his ability to heal us, Gaia that's a handy ability, to patch up our wounds, but Archeon was still limping kinda badly. We walked down the path behind the door for the fifteen feet or so that it stretched on. Then there were to passageways. Paul told us to wait up for a moment while he went to fetch his blade that he left in the dog. Once he returned, we took the path on the right. The passage grey narrower as it progressed further towards the door, there was barely enough room for Jack to fit as we finally arrived at the oaken door walking in single file, just like first graders are always being told to do. The door slid open without a sound, beyond was a dark chamber, the torches in that room seemed not to burn as brightly as the ones in the previous rooms had. There were great, marble Ionic columns reaching to the vaulted roof of the room. I nearly stumbled on the coffin in the middle of the floor as I walked through the darkness. I mumbled something along the lines of: "Great, first there are severely messed-up cultists, then a giant teddy bear and an electric dog attack us, Count Dracula is the only thing that this place needs to be a complete Hammer House of Horror movie." Then, Jack called to us from the end of the room opposite the one that we had entered from.
I walked, or stumbled, rather, to the opposite end of the room. We crowded around Jack to see what it was that he had found. A pedestal stood in front of him and upon it rested a large tome. He was opening the book when a voice came from the middle of the room.
"I would appreciate it if you would please close that book, it is something that belongs to me," it said.
"Who are you?" Paul asked as we turned around.
"I am myself and I would appreciate it if you would please get out of my house." responded the man standing in the middle of the room, he was blond and wore sunglasses with a slash mark across his right eye. He was wearing a black trench coat.
"Who's Mark?" Ryan asked.
"Mark used to live here, and now he, ah. does not. Now, will you pleas remove yourselves from my house?"
"What did you do to her?"
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes you do, the girl who was laying dead in the alleyway, what did you do to her?"
"Is it disgusting that a wolf should kill a rabbit so that it could feed?"
"What does that have to do with it?"
"What doesn't it have to do with it? I would expect that wolves such as yourselves would understand that sometimes things need to be killed for survival, after all, is it not the same as what you do to your 'worm'? Do you not kill it in hope that its death will bring survival? Mine is more useful because I know that it will let me survive, whereas you just sit around and hope."
"Point well taken, but why did you do it? And, it's 'Wyrm', not 'worm'."
"Is it wrong that a wolf should kill a rabbit so that it would not starve? That is all that I am doing. I am as the wolf, weeding out that which cannot defend itself while nourishing myself. But, I am afraid that I have not yet had my fill, so would one of you please be so valiant as to lend a bit of your blood?"
Paul stepped forward, "I will," he said, without the slightest hit of nervousness in his voice. The creature, it cannot truly be called a man without insulting the humans, bent his head down and bit into Paul's neck, after a moment he took his fangs out, apparently he had finished.
"Now, earlier I told you that Mark had left, this is not entirely true. I am Mark, and take this," he said as he threw one of the brown robes at Paul, "it'll protect you from damage by the sunlight." I took this time to point out that I, too, had been bitten, even if by one of his thralls. "Well, then I suppose you should need one as well," he responded as he tossed one to me, "now, if you would please be so kind as to get out of my house?"
It was about then that I noticed Ryan was missing. The light in the room began to cast odd shadows about the room as one of the torches removed itself from the wall. It then grew darker as the floating torch extinguished itself. Mark did not notice this, however, as he had his back turned to it. Suddenly, Mark's face appeared to be the very continence of pain, as his eyes widened and his sunglasses fell off. His mouth hung open helplessly, the end of a torch stuck out through his heart. He fell to the floor, behind him Ryan stood, grinning from ear to ear, I knew what he had done, he ad grabbed the torch and gone into the Umbra, he came back with it pointed so that it would be sticking through Mark's chest. Jack once again called to us from the tome at the back of the room, this time it was about something valuable. He had found Mark's ID and his bank account numbers.
So, we left that room, all of us hoping to forget it. We proceeded down the bleak, utilitarian grey hallway until we came across the door on the left side of the passage. The comfortingly familiar noise of an old iron door that needs to be oiled rang through the air as the door slid hesitantly open. The pack stepped into a roughly triangular room, at the far end, a scabbard hung on the wall. Paul placed the blade into it, and then put the handle on top of that; there was a flash of light. When he pulled the hilt out, he pulled out the sword as one piece, as it had most likely been, once upon a time. The emeralds and rubies along the back of the blade glistened in the torchlight. So, we left the Hell that we had found under a 'house of God', hoping that we would never come across something like what had awaited us down there ever again. ----------------------- [1] The Wyrm is a god of balance who was driven insane. The Weaver, also mad, is a goddess of order and structure; the Wyld is a god of pure change and potential.
My name is Jiman Lloyd, but people call me 'The Doctor'. It's part of a long running joke. I have a medical doctorate, but I hate everyone and everything that moves, people say that I have a Doctorate of Hate. But I'd be willing to bet that all the Metis hate everything that lives, because everything that lives hates us, even Victor, the other Metis in the pack, probably feels that way. That's just how us Metis are, though. We're exiles because our existence violates the Litany.
Don't ask what I am. I'm gonna tell you, but I don't expect you to believe it. Before all this happened, I wouldn't have believed it myself, well, most Garou, that's what we call ourselves, wouldn't, I grew up among our kind. I'm a werewolf. See? I told you that you weren't gonna believe me. Don't try and hide that disbelief, I know it's there, I've seen my true form, my Crinos form, drive people mad. Even the most determined of medics snaps like tinder wood when they see a creature that's half man, half wolf. Bones also snap like tinder wood when you're in Crinos. Of course, there's obviously some downside to these gifts, that's a society that has no margin for errors. You're assigned a place in it when you're born, and after that, you have to live with it. It doesn't matter how much you like it. Most tribes let you switch. Not my tribe, not the Stargazers. Oh well, I suppose I'm decent enough at what I'm supposed to do. I'm a Ragabash. That means I'm the trickster. I do my job differently than most people, though. My 'tricks' hurt if you if you don't notice them, it keeps you alert and paying attention to the world around you, so the point is still accomplished.
The Stargazers, my tribe, are no longer part of the Garou Nation, we left it a long time ago when we decided that its needs were not our own. I've come back to the Nation, though. I'm with a pack now, though our pack's name eludes me, I remember that our totem (that's the spirit that gives power to the pack) was, and still is, Momentum. It took all the money that the sept, a place where Garou gather, usually built upon a caern, back in South Korea had to fly me out here to the USA, but it was necessary. The elders foresaw that I would be needed out here, so I came. I was only 12, by human standards, when I came. I always got weird looks, but I suppose that's because I have a set of ram's horns on my head. They're there because my damned parents broke the litany (the laws of Garou society) and mated, they were both Garou, Garou blood must be watered down or it unerringly creates some defect in the child, who is a Metis. Not to mention the fact that a young Metis is born in Crinos form and usually claws its way out of its mother's womb. Regardless, I never fit in. When I was 14, I burned my high school to the ground in anger, on a weekend, though; I didn't want anyone to actually be hurt. I didn't get out of jail until I was 25. Then I joined up with this pack.
We were sitting in a nightclub when all this began, one week ago, in fact. On reflection, we really should have been doing our monthly sept duties, but we were sitting at a bar listening to the German band on stage. Victor wasn't there, though. We were wearing the black leather trench coats that our pack uses as standard issue, they're good for concealing things that you would rather not have people notice and can withstand a bit of punishment before tearing, though not much. Then some guy, also in a black trench coat, walk out back with his date, most likely to rape her. Black trench coats, drugs, violence, and rape are disgustingly common around here; the first one is only disgusting because they look so hideous. A glass of beer and a song later, we heard a scream from the alleyway behind the nightclub, I guessed that I had been right, and that the guy in the trench coat and sunglasses had raped her. We, that is the pack and I, went out back, maybe if we could bring this guy down, we could have an excuse as to why we hadn't been at the sept and doing routine chores like automatons.
When we got into the alley, I found that I had been wrong. She was lying on the ground bleeding from two little holes in her neck. I quickly diagnosed this; there is some use to having a doctorate, after all, and used part of my trench coat sleeve and the string from the hem to create a makeshift bandage. I checked her pulse; it was still there, so she hadn't entirely become one of those things, those Wyrm[1] servants yet. I don't think she survived through the night. It was then that a clang sounded from the fire escape on the building on the other side of the alley. We climbed up the fire escape to chase after the shadow that had just darted up onto the roof, except for Jack "the ripper" London, he went in the opposite direction. Oh well, Jack's an Ahroun, that means he's a warrior, his war- ish-ness is enhanced by his belonging to the Get of Fenris tribe. He was born to one Garou and one wolf, so he's called a Lupus. He's none too bright either.
The dying girl was able to rasp out one word as she died, it was "Mark". I'm not sure whether it was a name or if she was referring to a symbol of some sort, and we didn't have enough time to hang around and figure out what she meant. You tend not to have much time when a leech, that's what some of us call vampires, is hunting, it's never very safe to be around a leech, whether they're hunting or not.
It was about this time that I noticed that I didn't see Ryan Magee, the Theurge, or seer, of the pack. He's one of the Children of Gaia, the Children believe in peace, with the determination of a martyr. I have to admire them for being strong enough to hold this belief, especially when the Final Days are upon us, the days when the Final Battle of the Apocalypse will be any day now, the Prophecies of Phoenix are here, and yet they cry for peace. If you ask me, I'd say that any Child worth his salt is stronger than the toughest Get. Maybe the Get would win in combat, but he's just too afraid of peace and to unsure of his strength to call for peace, not like the Children. The Get let their bodies go to their heads. I bet that there's never been a single Get who paused to think of the Apocalypse as something other than the end. Not one who's contemplated if maybe it's not an end, so much as it is just a new beginning. I wasn't sure where Ryan was, I assumed that he was in the Umbra, or Spirit World, he sometimes shifts between our world and the Umbra when he doesn't want to, it just kinda happens on occasion. I heard some huffing as Jack caught up with us. Jack was now in Crinos, a rather risky thing to be doing during a rooftop chase across a metropolis. If a human sees a Crinos, he's usually driven stark raving mad. Victor Twiddle, the other Metis, suffers from periods of complete insanity, though not because he has seen a Garou, he is one for Gaia's sake, but because he's Metis.
A crash resounded through the air as the shadowy thing jumped through a stained-glass window of the old gothic cathedral, it was abandoned several years ago, though I don't know why. We didn't want to announce our entrance quite so loudly, so we hopped down to the ground and walked over to the front door. It was locked, just as I had suspected that it would be. Archeon opened the door for us with what he likes to call "unconventional methods", that means he picked the lock. I think Archeon is a stage-name of sorts, I call 'em hunt names, quite a few of us use 'em, I go by "Hates-the- world", Ryan goes by "Dark-Hunter", and Jack goes by "Jack the Ripper". Archeon is a Homid, which means one of his parents was Garou and the other was a human. He's a Philodox, the mediator. He's a member of the Shadow Lords, I don't trust the Lords. They always have some sort of scheme up their sleeve. The only reason I'm in a pack with one is because Ryan, the Child, schemes as well, and he can counter anything that Archeon does. It took him about five minutes to pick the lock, that was too long if you ask me.
When we finally got into the cathedral, there was no sign of our prey. There were rows of empty pews, a balcony that looked as though nobody had been on it since the cathedral had been shut down. The whole place seemed to be coated with dust, except for the pulpit and the area behind it. We went back there, as it was the only place that seems to have felt footfall since this place was closed. We found no evidence there as to where the leech had gone. We stood around for a while, before I kicked the rug behind the podium out of spite. There was an area underneath it where there had been some cuts in the stone flooring in the shape of a square, it had been filled in with some other kind of stone after it was cut, it was a bit lighter than the rest of the floor. Jack, in his amazing Get intelligence, punched the stone and nearly broke his hand. He pulled the sword out of this trench coat and tried prying it open; the sword nearly broke as well. It was then that I noticed that Ryan was among us again, Wyld he scares me when he just appears out of nowhere, it makes the fur on my neck stand on end.
An idea then came to me, I placed my hand on the 'panel' and channeled the force of the Umbra to open it, and, surly enough, it popped open. I silently thanked Gaia for remembering that I had gotten a raccoon- spirit to teach me that Gift, or supernatural power. We slowly descended the ladder that was below.
There was an open room before us, a bleak, utilitarian, grey cement room. The room was roughly diamond shaped. We walked forward for about twenty feet before two pathways branched off of the room we were in. Jack and Paul Monteford, another Ahroun and a member of the Silent Striders tribe, went into the room on the right; the rest of us took left. As we entered the room, we saw a man in brown robes kneeling before a statue of a man with bat wings and six arms. The statue was the same lifeless grey as the rest of the complex, for lack of a better term. He placed the broken hilt of a sword at the base of the statue. He lifted his head as Ryan's heavy boots hit the floor. He stood up, keeping his right hand pressed against his heart all the while. Archeon took out his pistol, that's when this 'cultist', I can't think what else to describe him as, lowered his hand and a mace slid down his arm and he caught it as the grip graced his palm. The hooded figure walked silently towards us. When he got close to Archeon, he raised the mace, showing no sign of tension. It was about then that Ryan shot him in the back with his pistol. Paul walked over to the statue and stared at it for a while, as though transfixed. It was amazing, now that I had the time to look at it, how the elegance and complexity of the statue contrasted so harshly with the utilitarian grey that it was sculpted of. Paul then picked up the hilt at the statue's feet and stared at it. The handle was made with an intertwining pattern of gold, silver, and iron, with a mother-of-pearl streak running down the middle, the safety- guard, I don't know what else to call it, you know, the thing that separates the pommel from the blade, was the shape of a crescent moon with the points facing towards were the blade would go.
We turned around and saw a door at the back of the room; it was made of drab, rusted iron. Whoever owned this place really needed to hire an interior decorator, I found the bleak walls and demented statues quite tasteless. The door moaned as it opened. A dark hallway stretched on before our pack, lit only by the torches that gave the place an eerie glow, they were everywhere down here. As we arrived at the end of the passage there was a turn to the right, when we stepped through the sound of automatic fire echoed through the bleak, silent corridors. The three 'cultists' might have proved more challenging had I not pulled out the SMG that Victor was letting me use in his absence and strafed 'em all. Archeon went over and grabbed the hooded guy's SMG while I loaded a new clip into mine, he checked his and found that it was empty, I tossed him a full clip and noticed that his gun was of lesser quality than Victor's.
We wandered back into the main hall, Paul and Jack hadn't found anything, the room that they had checked had been full of empty crates, they were about to follow after us, or so they said, until they heard the automatic fire and decided that they didn't want to get pumped full of lead. You can't blame 'em for not wanting to get shot, I suppose. We went forward, the bleak walls seemed to be draining our souls. Well, not really, but that makes it sound impressive and they did kinda get us bored and not want to finish this. We opened the door at the end of the hall, now tilting up and to the left of the ladder that had led us here.
Howls of other Garou rang through the air as we opened the door; in the room that it sheltered were two Garou in Crinos, their brown fur glistening with sweat and Wyld-knows-what-else in the torchlight. They cried out in the ancient tongue of the Garou, they shouted for us to join them, commanded us to dance the Black Spiral. These were Black Spiral Dancers, members of the fallen Garou tribe. Long ago, they were known as the White Howlers, as their rite of initiation, they would have cubs go run through part of the Black Spiral. Eventually, the Wyrm grew tired of these incessant taunts; he conquered and corrupted the White Howlers, making them into the Black Spiral Dancers. This problem was solved in a slightly different manner than or last one. We pulled out our swords and decided to face these Garou in melee, as the bullets would not do much against them.
Jack stood his ground for a moment; he then placed his sword back inside his trench coat and took out a pair of knives to fight with. He took careful aim with the first, and released it. The blade danced through the air for a moment before it struck the wall. He threw the other in frustration and it hit one of the Dancers in the eye. He then pulled his sword (he likes to call it Ol' Slahy) out of his coat again. I raised my blade to defend against an attack that was about to reduce my face to a pile of ribbons on the floor, I'm glad that I blocked, I'm sure that the smell of ribbons of flesh would have thoroughly disgusted me. I swung up and severed the head of the first of the fallen Garou. The second one was lunging for Ryan when he rolled out of the way and put his blade through its brain. As it fell, he removed the ring from its finger.
We proceeded on, fairly certain that those Spiral Dancers wouldn't be bothering us anymore. The next few rooms were uneventful, though quite lacking in decorum, as was the rest of this 'dungeon'. The owner could have, at the very least, painted the walls or something, or maybe scribbled a few things in blood to make it more horrifying. But, I suppose that the emptiness was, in its own way, rather frightening. We ran across another of the figures, but he was easily taken care of after a few swings of our swords. There was a large iron door at the end of the hall that the cultist had been in. Upon it these words were inscribed: "Place here the circle of the bringer of day". None of us knew what it meant until Ryan looked at the ring he had taken from the Spiral. Upon it was emblazoned a small sun. He placed it in the small, circular indentation in the door and it slid open.
The passage way continued on for a bit longer before it turned down and to the right. The walls were their usual hollow, emotionless, unadorned concrete. It was odd that, after having my life put in danger here twice, the bleak walls were becoming slightly comforting, they were always there, they were constant. eternal. they would not let me down. We entered the first room, after proceeding down this new hallway for about forty feet or so. I was walking in front of the rest of the pack, that's what did me in. As I stepped into the room, I felt cold hands placed upon my shoulders, then, a brief, piercing pain at two points on my neck. Then, a wave of pure euphoria washed over my body, flowed by one of agony. In rage and pain, I threw the cultist against the far wall. His spine snapped, I know that 'cause I heard it. The wall caved in behind him, revealing a secret passage of sorts. The passage was made of uncut stone. At the end was a round chamber with a small reflecting pond in the middle. I can't imagine why anyone would want to seal this place off. I saw something shine at the bottom of the pool and dived down to try and pull it out. It was a blade, not a full sword, but just the blade. I imagined that it went with the hilt that Paul had found and handed it to him. We returned to the main room, I made a point of smashing the skull of the moron who had bitten me with my foot as we came out of the cave in the wall. We went down a narrow passage for about thirty feet before we came across the next room. There were four of the cultists in this room; two of them pulled out guns while the others revealed maces in much the same manner as the first one that we had fought.
This time, it wasn't us who opened fire. One of them shot me in the chest, rather, he shot at my chest. The bullet ended up getting lodged in my hideous trench coat. I reached out for the nearest one and smacked the mace out of his hand. He then latched onto Ryan like the other one had latched onto me. Ryan tossed his pistol from his right to his left hand and pointed it at the face of the freak that had grabbed him. His body tensed as the cultist neared his neck. I know from my own experience that the thing's breath smelled of decay. Ryan desperately pulled the trigger and the thing's head splattered into probably about seven or eight pieces. Jack grabbed another one and slammed his head into the wall with all of the force that an angry werewolf n Crinos can muster, and that's a Hell of a lot. Paul emptied a few .44 magnum rounds into the third of the hooded things and watched the flesh and blood spray out of the wounds that tore through the chest of the man, if something that goes around biting your neck can really be called a man. The last was disposed of by Archeon after a few slashes with his sword. We walked down the empty, soulless passage for about another twenty-five feet before we arrived at the ladder that took us farther down into the depths of that Hellhole.
The grand room that laws then before us was different than the others in that catacomb, it was decorated. The art was a disturbing mural showing people being mutilated by a bear on the left wall. The right wall had a mural of a metallic dog sending out electricity and tearing a man's throat out. We steeled ourselves as we opened the grand, forbidding iron doors that lay at the end of the room opposite the ladder. In the room on the other side was a small, iron statue of a dog facing a giant bear that appeared to be preserved through taxidermy. Flesh, spinal cords, and many an assorted organ were strewn about the room. How could a stuffed bear and an electric dog (if the mural was right) have killed that many things?
We walked to the other end of the room. The doors were firmly shut. I went over to the 'dog' and kicked it out of spite, that's when things turned to Hell. Electricity began to course through the dog, hey, the mural was right, and I felt a surge of electricity and a stabbing pain in my ankle. I looked down and noticed that the dog was biting my foot. I shook my leg violently for a while before the dog finally came off; it took a good chunk of my flesh with it. Archeon tried shooting the dog, but the bullets just bounced off of the metal smoothness. We thought for a moment about using swords, but the fact that this dog was electric discouraged us from attempting this. It was then that Paul had an idea, those are rather rare for him. He took the blade that he had found earlier and threw it into the dog. It seemed like a good idea, because all of the electricity channeled out of the dog, but where it went was even more of a problem than the dog had been. The energy went straight into the bear standing inert opposite the dog.
The bear let out a growl as it lunged towards me with, if you'll pardon the pun, newfound energy. Archeon tried to empty a spray of automatic fire into it, only to discover that his SMG was empty. I tried mine, but the magazine was empty on that too. I ejected it and started running backwards to avoid the thing. I shouted at my packmates to cover me while I reloaded me gun. It took me a moment of nervous fumbling to find the magazine and load it into my SMG. I shouted a command to move out of the way, and they seemed to hear me, either that or they had had enough of dealing with the bear. I pointed my gun and held the trigger down. Rejoicing in the carnage that spewed from the gigantic grizzly. I found myself screaming obscene words at the thing as it fell. We slung the heavy iron doors open, we were all shaking slightly. The thing had mauled Archeon pretty badly. Ryan had used his ability to heal us, Gaia that's a handy ability, to patch up our wounds, but Archeon was still limping kinda badly. We walked down the path behind the door for the fifteen feet or so that it stretched on. Then there were to passageways. Paul told us to wait up for a moment while he went to fetch his blade that he left in the dog. Once he returned, we took the path on the right. The passage grey narrower as it progressed further towards the door, there was barely enough room for Jack to fit as we finally arrived at the oaken door walking in single file, just like first graders are always being told to do. The door slid open without a sound, beyond was a dark chamber, the torches in that room seemed not to burn as brightly as the ones in the previous rooms had. There were great, marble Ionic columns reaching to the vaulted roof of the room. I nearly stumbled on the coffin in the middle of the floor as I walked through the darkness. I mumbled something along the lines of: "Great, first there are severely messed-up cultists, then a giant teddy bear and an electric dog attack us, Count Dracula is the only thing that this place needs to be a complete Hammer House of Horror movie." Then, Jack called to us from the end of the room opposite the one that we had entered from.
I walked, or stumbled, rather, to the opposite end of the room. We crowded around Jack to see what it was that he had found. A pedestal stood in front of him and upon it rested a large tome. He was opening the book when a voice came from the middle of the room.
"I would appreciate it if you would please close that book, it is something that belongs to me," it said.
"Who are you?" Paul asked as we turned around.
"I am myself and I would appreciate it if you would please get out of my house." responded the man standing in the middle of the room, he was blond and wore sunglasses with a slash mark across his right eye. He was wearing a black trench coat.
"Who's Mark?" Ryan asked.
"Mark used to live here, and now he, ah. does not. Now, will you pleas remove yourselves from my house?"
"What did you do to her?"
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes you do, the girl who was laying dead in the alleyway, what did you do to her?"
"Is it disgusting that a wolf should kill a rabbit so that it could feed?"
"What does that have to do with it?"
"What doesn't it have to do with it? I would expect that wolves such as yourselves would understand that sometimes things need to be killed for survival, after all, is it not the same as what you do to your 'worm'? Do you not kill it in hope that its death will bring survival? Mine is more useful because I know that it will let me survive, whereas you just sit around and hope."
"Point well taken, but why did you do it? And, it's 'Wyrm', not 'worm'."
"Is it wrong that a wolf should kill a rabbit so that it would not starve? That is all that I am doing. I am as the wolf, weeding out that which cannot defend itself while nourishing myself. But, I am afraid that I have not yet had my fill, so would one of you please be so valiant as to lend a bit of your blood?"
Paul stepped forward, "I will," he said, without the slightest hit of nervousness in his voice. The creature, it cannot truly be called a man without insulting the humans, bent his head down and bit into Paul's neck, after a moment he took his fangs out, apparently he had finished.
"Now, earlier I told you that Mark had left, this is not entirely true. I am Mark, and take this," he said as he threw one of the brown robes at Paul, "it'll protect you from damage by the sunlight." I took this time to point out that I, too, had been bitten, even if by one of his thralls. "Well, then I suppose you should need one as well," he responded as he tossed one to me, "now, if you would please be so kind as to get out of my house?"
It was about then that I noticed Ryan was missing. The light in the room began to cast odd shadows about the room as one of the torches removed itself from the wall. It then grew darker as the floating torch extinguished itself. Mark did not notice this, however, as he had his back turned to it. Suddenly, Mark's face appeared to be the very continence of pain, as his eyes widened and his sunglasses fell off. His mouth hung open helplessly, the end of a torch stuck out through his heart. He fell to the floor, behind him Ryan stood, grinning from ear to ear, I knew what he had done, he ad grabbed the torch and gone into the Umbra, he came back with it pointed so that it would be sticking through Mark's chest. Jack once again called to us from the tome at the back of the room, this time it was about something valuable. He had found Mark's ID and his bank account numbers.
So, we left that room, all of us hoping to forget it. We proceeded down the bleak, utilitarian grey hallway until we came across the door on the left side of the passage. The comfortingly familiar noise of an old iron door that needs to be oiled rang through the air as the door slid hesitantly open. The pack stepped into a roughly triangular room, at the far end, a scabbard hung on the wall. Paul placed the blade into it, and then put the handle on top of that; there was a flash of light. When he pulled the hilt out, he pulled out the sword as one piece, as it had most likely been, once upon a time. The emeralds and rubies along the back of the blade glistened in the torchlight. So, we left the Hell that we had found under a 'house of God', hoping that we would never come across something like what had awaited us down there ever again. ----------------------- [1] The Wyrm is a god of balance who was driven insane. The Weaver, also mad, is a goddess of order and structure; the Wyld is a god of pure change and potential.