September 26, 2002.09.26.02. - eagle's chosen [pack forms](decker)
8:30pm. A few days past the equinox, the sun's already long below the horizon. The meeting spot's an empty lot behind a hulking delapidated warehouse, illuminated by a few distant, sickly yellow streetlamps.Decker, Lucian and Erik are the first on the scene, pulling up in a clanking rust bucket that might've once been a sky-blue Ford truck. Erik's got shotgun, Decker's got driver's, and Luc is sandwiched in between on the bench seat. The faux leather is cracked and springs jut out uncomfortably.
Stopping the car without switching off the headlights, Decker muscles his door open and gets out, slamming the door shut immediately after. Erik, just as quiet but a little more courteous, leaves his door open for Luc. The asphalt under their feet is potholed and cracked from years of use and disuse. Empty cans, wind and the distant sound of the street are the only interruptions to the silence.
(lucian)
He jumps out on Erik side rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand. Officially the one with the least juice in the group--fuckin fantastic. Spitting out the small toothpick he had been mangling for the last half hour her circles round the back of the pick up and leans against the fender.
(james)
the Z-3 isn't far behind, rustbucket blue clearing the way for metallic purple pristine paint, shined wheels, rollin' with the top down
note the lack of a death grip on the passenger door handle
Rune remebered to turn her headlights on early (helps with those auto features the new-fangled expensive type cars have) and he's sure the seatbelts work, the pack left behind in consideration of the car's interior, he even made sure to wipe his second hand Cochran's before stepping in, fingers laced between his skull and the headrest, light brown dreadlocks tied back beneath a bandana as the tophat just wouldn't have workedit's all good
the potholes avoided and oiled brakes let the car slide to a stop, he's out a few seconds after Rune, her posh fasion compared to his surplus store scrounging, hands slipping into the pockets of black BDUs
(decker)
Decker and Erik, the former prowling across the headlight beams, the latter leaning against the hood between them, nod at Rune and James almost as one. Decker glances up at the moon, roughly half-full, and Erik glances at his watch. One more guy and they're good to go.Livingston Bramble. Ghetto grunge thug. Dreads and ratty clothes and a mouth to make a sailor blush. God knows where he came from or what his real name is, but he's an acquaintance of Rune's, and they needed a Theurge.
Ten, twenty minutes later, footsteps scraping around the side of the warehouse. Decker stops his pacing and looks up. The sixth member of the pack. Everyone was accounted for.
"All right," says Erik, "let's do this."
(lucian)
A match (from god knows where..) is lit against the fender setting cancer-stick ablaze as the man ambles back to the front. He eyes torn from the girl across the street reluctantly...(decker)
"Watch the fuckin' paint," mutters Decker without looking around. Not that there was much paint left the watch, but it was the principle of the gesture.Ambling into the warehouse (funny how there were always so many of these conveniently abandoned), coughing lightly in the dust drifting in the air, Decker cracks neck, knuckles, shoulders and back, limbering up as though for a good fight. They said Eagle was a hardnosed totem. Might require some sort of chiminage from the ones petitioning him.
(james)
"About fucking time." whiplashed from those lips in the neverending luminous smirk, Rune watching the arrival then back to the boys gathered to playthe Gnawer, though, only smiles a bit
watching, waiting, learning as he goes
not necessarily skulking back in the shadows, but he knows he isn't head honcho with this group so isn't about to step foreward with anything just yet
but its his stance that has changed, still outwardly calm, still with that easy smile, t-shirt betraying the build a life on the streets has granted that's normally hidden by the Alice pack and his coat, he almost looks like he belongs in that surplus gearhe's not planning on failing, no matter how tough they say Eagle is
no doubt, if anything, he's a scrapper as guttertrenched and brawly as they come(lucian)
"What paint?"He grumbles under his breath. (fuckin fosterns think they KNOW everything.) and follows the trio inside still sucking the smoke into his lungs with slow pleasure. He's usually the last of the group, the last to do everything--taking up the rear, thats his job.
(rune)
"You can fuck with his paint," the briefest glance flashed back to the emptied lot through the shipping bay door now sliding back down, the shriek of rust and metal protesting the rare abusive use. "...just stay away from mine."It's a narrow-eyed glance she shoots around the assembled, before tap-tap-tapping out a cancer stick. Cigarette perched between her lips, half-suspended in the act of lighting up, "...we doin' this?"
Pack shit. It made her nervous. It made her very fucking nervous.
(decker)
A loud snort from Decker, up ahead in the near-total darkness inside the warehouse. The scritching click of a cheap Bic lighter. Fiat lux, motherfuckers: Erik enters with with his lighter held high like at a Queen concert, the tiny flame giving pitiful light to a radius of perhaps six feet.Revealed: Decker crouched on the ground, one knee folded up; Livingston two steps through the door, sizing the place up. After a moment, he shakes his head.
"It ain't gon fuckin' work, assholes," decides Livingston. "Ya cain't call no fuckin Eagle from inside a fuckin warehouse. I'ma go outside, a'ight?"
Decker and Erik exchange looks, mutter, get up, and head out again.
(james)
she's not the only one nervous, but he doesn't let it show
falling in just behind the Walker
too bad he doesn't smoke
probably the only one in the pack that doesn't, by the looks of it
probably the only one that doesn't swear like a three dollar whore, eitherbut it's livin'
learnin'
new Stuffand that's what's important
not to mention the irony of it all
that's the kicker(lucian)
"Pssshct!"He shoulda' stayed outside with taht hottie who was casin' his shit. Blue eyes roll into the back of his head and the yankees cap is pulled lower over squared features. Back outside again--its like fuckin' Simon says.
"..If you let me drive that shit you gotta deal, chick."
(rune)
Rune swings after them, shaking her head. Her dark mane swings with the gesture, and she has to shift a pale hand through her hair to get the stray strands outta her face. She takes another long hard drag off the cigarette and crouches, then jumps off the shipping dock with an utter ease of motion, dressed tonight in the loose jeans, t-shirt and boots that are dedicated to her just in case.In other words: slummin'.
"You'll keep your filthy fuckin' hands off'a her, is what you'll do," she says, exhaling a stream of gray smoke. "And then I'll let you fuckin' live."
(sal)
:: pulls his luxury car into the lot outside the warehouse farm opens toor slowly and shuts it quickly with an audible thump talking quickly to on of two shadowed figures on the inside ::"yeah i heard palmice say somthin about a shitload of crates fulla' shit... yeah shit we can sell. HEY who's the boss here... i'lll fuggin be back okay!?
:: he whistles quietly as he walks toward the first warehouse his steps tip- tapping as he goes ::
(decker)
"Wouldn't touch her car if I was you," mutters Decker as he moves past Lucian, just the faintest quirk of a smirk hooking his mouth at the end of it.Outside, Livingston paces in a wide circle and then nods. "Yeah, yeah, this's good. A'ight." Eyelids shut. Feet braced. Palms skyward, eyes moving behind the screen of their lids. Doing the Theurge thing.
Erik is intent, alert, ready. Decker sinks to a crouch again, idly scratching at the bigass scab just about to come off his gut, watching through heavy-lidded eyes, somewhere between bored, apathetic and (eternally) pissed off.
Gradually, the six grow aware of a seventh, greater than all of them put together, more massive, endless. The screeching of a car's tires a block away might be the scream of an eagle as large as the sky. The sudden, unexplainable implosion of the nearest streetlight might be the glint of a huge golden eye.
(lucian)
Ducking.He smirks (...moon dancer.) and reaches downward grabbing at his crotch as lips blow a kiss to Rune. (Feisty, yeah thats hot... Rrrrrr.) and when he's a safe distance away a low whistle ensues...
"You know you want it, chick."
(sal)
:: looks over to the other end of the lot as a streetlight violently explodes and takes a step back muttering ::"god i fuggin hate fire..."
:: he looks around now suspicious of the area around him ::
(james)
the boyman folds into a crouch, watching
head tilting as fingers splay across the ground
there's a rhythm herea bone rhythm
fingertips softly mimicing the pulsewingbeatflapstaccatotempo that's shuddering up through something deeper than even the unsseen that gathers all around them, near silent cadence against cracked asphalt
eagle's scream slicing over the treetops of the concrete jungle
gathering on the boondock pride and highrise junkies
the urban and the primitive wrapped all into a single entity
(rune)
"...the fuck I let myself get talked into this?" she asks - the stars, the moon, the others, any friendly spirit that might be listening. Whoever.The sour taste in her mouth is familiar as the contours of her own body, and bitter as ash, and Rune swallows hard against it. She's in the middle of sucking down a long hard drag off'a her Sobrainie (hot pink, this one), but then she feels it. Feels - that - thing greater than any of them, swallowing the whole goddamned sky, and the half-lit cigarette falls from nerveless fingers to the brown weeds carpeting the lot. Unconsciously, Rune draws herself up, opens her arms.
Waits.
Waits.(sal)
(( so srry!! i gtg ))
:: walks slowly then breaking to a run back to the vehicle and opens the door looking around 360 once then climbing inside ::"there's nothing... here.. yeah nothin'. And I don't like bein this far out of AC, and we got much more important work there"
(decker)
A gust of wind, sudden and fierce, as though massive, invisible wings descended from the sky. The ground trembles gently, as though from talons of a primordial beast sinking into it. They feel it - a bulging in their minds, a pressure almost like that of the air upon the eardrums in an airplane climbing too fast.A roaring in their ears makes normal conversation impossible. At the center of the loose circle formed instinctively by the would-be pack, Livingston shouts over the noise in their heads:
"Cross over! Go Umbral!"
What, here in the middle of the city? Decker glances up, one hand holding his too-full head, and grunts. His extremities begin to go transparent as he pushes against the Gauntlet, the passage harder for him than it is for many others more attuned to the other-world.
(lucian)
Like dust in the wind..only less poetic. A wind blows and the group of them have vanish (..not so simply..) have faded into another phase of reality, truth of the spirit. He stares into the reflecyive surface of his lighter and is immediatly struct by the choking feeling of webbing and taint--one cough than another..
Can he keep pace with an eagle?
(rune)
Fuck. Muttered, instinctive, the half-voiced curse that no one else will hear, as she pulls a small compact outta her left hip pocket. The gauntlet is heavy and thick in this place, viscous, with the lumpy texture of cottage cheese. Dark eyes half-closing with the strain of it, she pushes through and out with her mind, grunting under her breath with the effort, struggling to remember to breathe and to control the rising panic when her passage is so damn slow.
(james)
is there anything wrong with in the middle of the city?
ya just gotta be smooth, man, smoothcourse, considering....
it doesn't take him long to follow the order of the hour, a thought, a tune, a last glance to the end of the world as he so far knows it, and pressure increases across splayed fingers on the asphalt scab, thinning, slimming, smooooooothing out before weight shifts backwards to let the Decayed Jungle's Child step on through to the other side
if foreward is too thick, take a dive to the side
think like the eagle
move like the eagle
keep up with the eagleor some jive like that
(decker)
...and the instant they cross, they are quite literally impaled on the talons of the Eagle.A great, ghostly presence looms in the air amongst all the steel-sheened webs: bright and nearly solid where the light of Luna falls; completely transparent where shadows ought to lie. A great eagle seen through the impressionist's eye, here a crest of wing; there a gleaming golden eye - and everywhere, everywhere, the beating tornado of his wings, the clutching grasp of his talons seizing them, sinking deep into flesh.
It's an odd sight, that. Where the Eagle is transparent, blood wells from invisible wounds - stigmata - gouged by invisible claws. Grasped, taken like rag dolls, lifted into the sky by the powerful beat of wings spanning the horizons, they are utterly powerless to resist.
Batter my heart, three-personed God...
...or batter their bodies, as he will. The Theurge, Livingston, shudders violently. His eyes roll back into his head and his mouth opens wide, issuing the piercing cry of an eagle that swells from all about them, that vibrates to the cores of each their bodies.
(Then spoke the thunder.)
And then speaks the Theurge, his words comprehensible, forming strange overlay with the words of the great Totem echoing like distant thunder, slicing like the cry of a thousand eagles. He speaks, without accent, without inflection, without himself:
"WHY SEEK THE EAGLE?"
(james)
dark eyes stumble half closed, the Ahroun twisting in talon's implosive grip, powerful vibrations turning into the most spectacular rhythms
heartbeat forced to fall in time with the thunderous tornado of each beat that lifts them higher into oblivious horizons filled only with that piercing cry beneath the featherdown comforter of an endless wingspan
heartstopping
bonebreaking
mindjarringcan ya handle it?
oh yes
there's a cool confidence in the Bone Gnawer, putting together the impressionistic pieces to find the spirit as a whole, to gather everywhere into one, just think, therefore it is, but god this is gonna hurt laterhe doesn't say a word
it's already knowntheir rhyme, reason, hearts, souls, and every finite intent is laid out transparent
all at once
they couldn't have practiced it betterpack. guidance. we heed your strength. we need your wisdom. we ask your favor.
(decker)
One by one, they shift into their warforms to confront the wartotem, perhaps not of their own will: Decker, steel-grey and white; Lucian, steel-grey and dark; Erik, steel-grey and grey. And the focus on the hurricane, the mouth of the thunder: Livingston, mottled greyblackbrownred and white.Words tumble from their lips, some torn grudging, some spilling forth, all certain and sure. Pack. Favor. Totem. Pack.
And those great golden eyes turn upon them, each in turn: boring through the skin, peeling away the lies, shearing them down to the core of who, what they are, casting away the human and the wolf and the masks and the facades they wear to pass unnoticed through life, until they are as bare as they will ever be, before or hence.
And, though already he knew the answer, Eagle speaks, and Livingston echoes:
"WHY SHOULD THE EAGLE SEEK YOU?"
(rune)
Breathing. Breathing. Breathing....barely. Short sharp and shallow, whuffing little breaths sucked in through her nose and exhaled between bare teeth. Rune's mind is a half-broken kalaidescope, the mirror missing, the elegant fractals degenerated into a mottled, blobby tangle of dingy colors. Whatever she says, the truth is there - laid bare across her half-flayed soul. Eagle shouldn't seek her, shouldn't seek her, shouldn't see her and well she knows it. Muffled and misshapen beneath half-a-dozen winding layers of sensation and half-assed façades, the truth is there. Hero they said. Miserable fool, she knows.
(james)
he gives in
he knew it would happen
mouse brown exchanges itself for his clothes, chest heaving as the air is sucked away, bones reshaped as putty beneath the almighty power, sculpted into everything and flattened to what there was even before his creation, his First Shift, his acceptances and rejectionsnothing but the Endless.
and the Bone Gnawer smiles
letting the Eagle see His answer(decker)
Decker spits the words defiant: Because I am strong! - even as the rest of those who would henceforth be his pack give their own, various answers. Some speak of strength; others of wisdom; still others of courage, hope, determination...and some remain silent."THERE ARE NO SECRETS IN THE PACK." These words skewer the ones who do not speak almost as physically as they seem to skewer the Theurge, who is arched as taut as a bowstring, played like a violin, like a puppet, by the great spirit who speaks now, personally and deafeningly, through his tearing vocal cords. "I SEE ALL SECRETS. I KNOW ALL TRUTHS. I DESTROY ALL DECEIT."
"I WILL TELL YOU WHY. "
"YOU ARE INDULGENCE WITHOUT COURAGE." These words crush through their ears, but most particularly Rune's. "I WILL GIVE YOU STRENGTH.
"YOU ARE STRENGTH WITHOUT PATH." Decker. "I WILL GIVE YOU WISDOM.
"YOU ARE WISDOM WITHOUT ROOT." Livingston. "I WILL GIVE YOU PURPOSE.
"YOU ARE PURPOSE WITHOUT TOLERANCE." James - and this, perhaps, is surprising to the most easygoing of the pack. "I WILL GIVE YOU COMPASSION.
"YOUR COMPASSION TWISTS INTO YOUR ENDS." Lucian. "I WILL GIVE YOU HONOR.
"AND YOU." Erik, the would-be Alpha. "YOU ARE HONOR WITHOUT PACK. I WILL GIVE YOU A PACK."
White light.
White noise.Wings, feathers, and the sense of something wide as the sky lancing in through the invisible puncture wounds at their solar plexi, tearing through them, branding them, destroying them, remaking them - becoming a part of them.
(rune)
It fills her, fire this, lightning stuff without form or substance into the deep black emptyness lodged somewhere between breast and gut. She convulses around it, bleeding, choking on Eagle's truths, which are no less bitter than her own matchless, unearthed lies.The scar tissue is fibrous, but not yet calloused, here and there still pink and raw and tender as the day it began coiling around some festering splinter of despair. She can no longer breathe, or perhaps it is more painful to breathe than not, and only when her lungs are screaming and her reflexes take over does she suck in a screaming lungful of air.
and another.
and another.
mouth open in a rictus of a silent scream, teeth bared, truth bared.
(james)
white light
white heat
white noisewhite trashed
he had nothing to hide
he bared everything, without fear, without fight, without worry
the garou convulses as the words thrum in his ears, vibrating from the tips of the dreadlocks that never quite went away to the points of taloned toes
surprise finds its way into rolling eyes
it was not the fault he expected the spirit to see
perhaps it, then, was not his worsteperhaps he will not make the same mistakes again
out of compassion, there is hopebranded
brand sonthe play on words a circle, a drum circle, something instinctively formed by the would-be pack, i will give you a pack, out of the many, they have become one, the one now joins the many in blinding heat melting everything together in the sudden vicious destruction begetting the grandest creation
pack
(decker)
"YOU UNDERSTAND.
THEN FLY!"The talons piercing them through the breast, through the plexus, through the heart withdraw suddenly and completely. Abandoned, cast away, thrown from the nest to fly -
They fall.
The Umbral moon is large as the earth. The ground rushes up to meet them, trees as sharp as stakes, rocks as vicious as teeth. They fall, and eventually, no matter how brave, they scream - they must scream - and, screaming, they hear the call of Eagle in their own voices, feel the pain of feathers pushing through flesh even as the earth yawns wide to devour them.
They hit the ground,
and all is black....
Black like asphalt.
Black like a night in which every streetlight within five blocks has mysteriously burst.
Black like the afterstink of lightning.
Black like singed hair.
Black like the void of the stars, where the moon is the eye of the Eagle.They find themselves alive - together - sprawled facedown on the ground. Decker's truck still idles. Its headlights still glare blankly at the wall of the warehouse. Turning over, they will find a tiny scar in the shape of Eagle's glyph branded over their breastbone, and though their memories may already be vague, they will always bear this as reminder of who they are.
Eagle's Chosen.
Posted by james at September 26, 2002 12:00 AM
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