Kelsey was probably looking for the storm. She has a thing
about bad weather, and a bit of the Overconfidence flaw I excised
from Sepdet.
Kelsey says "Or GM's discretion."
From afar, Kelsey was thinking "on the slope overlooking
the caern, intending to go down and hide in the cave if it starts
getting bad."
The sky is ominous indeed.
The clouds overhead which have been gathering since yesterday
are starting to take on ominous purple and green tints. Thunder
rolls overhead, echoing off the mountainsides until the echoes
are more impressive than the original sound. Rain is coming down
in gusts and sheets of water.
Voice-of-Accord is cold and wet and drowned in the euphoria of
the storm, howling at the symphony of thunder rocketing off the
slopes. A lungful of rain finally brings her to her senses with
a choking gurgle. After clearing her throat, she starts to stagger
her way back down the trail, heading for the shelter of the caern's
heart.
The volume of the rain suddenly increases, along with the violence
of the wind, which actually lifts her off her feet and flings
her against the side of the mountain. Under the Garou's feet the
trail is swiftly turning into a miniature set of rapids, brown
and white with mud and foam.
Voice-of-Accord's yelp is knocked out of her by the impact. Well,
at least there's no one about to notice her sprained dignity.
She scrambles for purchase in the rolling gravel and mud as she
picks herself up and attempts to resume her slithering retreat
to lower ground.
Voice-of-Accord
Voice-of-Accord is a young healthy wolf in her prime, sleek, black,
with an unusually long mane and feathers at her heels and tail
that might be described as "fluffy" by ill-advised persons
who failed to notice the edge in her gaze and the whiteness of
her teeth. Her intelligent brown eyes tend to search restlessly,
as does her sensitive nose. She is handsome, this canine, with
a hair seldom out of place, a lithe if not overly large body,
a dark coat like the shadowed undersides of building thunderheads,
and neat white claws and teeth kept trimmed to sharpness. Not
overly large or aggressive in her manners, she nevertheless carries
herself with a pride and presence that lends gravity to her statements.
Hail begins to pelt the hillside, along with a drench of rain
which would do credit to Niagara. A large pine branch sails by
on the wind and embeds itself in the cliff face not five feet
from Voice-of-Accord. Underneath her paws, the mud is fast approaching
a strange quality of frictionlessness, and her slithering starts
to go faster and faster.
This is bad. Terror is beneath any Shadow Lord, of course, but
Kel knows when she's bitten off more than she can chew. She fights
for a diagonal vector, to move sideways off the path as well as
down, fur matted and muddied and beginning to be bloodied as stones
mixed with the torrent bruise her paws and tumble across her back.
Due to the large volume of water, the trail is now beginning to
ignore the switchbacks and take a direct downward route. The size
of the hail increases, stinging and pinging off everything in
the area. A flash of lightning briefly illuminates the scene as
Voice-of-Accord, borne downward in a waterfall of mud, lodges
in a spiky scrub pine, which creaks under her slight weight.
Voice-of-Accord whimpers as the branches dig into her and the
hillside continue to pour down on her. She peers into the chaos
of mud and water, shivering even as her ears lift again in awe
at the pyrotechnics. Oh, for a surfboard. But maybe...
She scrambles, trying to clamber up the side of the unfortunate
evergreen and hang on.
The little pine creaks and thrashes under the weight of the Garou.
The hail has increased to the size of hazelnuts, pounding everything
in the vicinity unmercifully. Thunder booms overhead, the massive
sound echoing coldly and indifferently from peak to peak. Then,
suddenly, the combination of Voice-of-Accord and the torrent excavating
its roots becomes too much for the scrubby little tree. It upends
itself, sliding rapidly down the mountainside, roots in the air.
Voice-of-Accord will stay until dislodged, paws slotted into the
nest of crunching and splintering boughs, struggling to keep it
between her and the rapid rocky ground like a makeshift sled or
raft. Flotsam, she is, another howl ripped away by the wind. My
Grandfather's daughter! I know you! A single drop of rain, I know
the thunderhead!
The hail has reached the size of golfballs, and the rain pouring
down on Voice-of-Accord makes it difficult to see anything at
all. Suddenly, the front of the tree tilts sharply downward, flinging
the wolf into the air as it joins a landslide of mud and boulders.
Another unfortunate tree breaks her fall - barely - as she hits
an opposite hillside with a bone-breaking crunch. Overhead, the
storm howls on.
There goes a rib or two. The wolf lies limply and lets the hail
pound her, dazed and stunned, yet swimming in a haze of adrenalin
from that which cannot, of course, be real terror. But she refuses
to be helpless or to panic. Aching with cold and the throb of
knitting bone, she hauls herself up yet again and tries to stand
her ground and scout her surroundings for any place where mere
mud and water, rather than rock, river, and tree is making its
decent.
The garou looks up the hillside just in time to see a landslide,
twin to the one she was just flung from, bearing down on her with
breathtaking speed.
Thoughts flee as time crawls. She bolts horizontally along the
steep slope with absolute clarity, whole being fixed only upon
next stride which may or may not take her past the edge of the
oncoming avalanche.
The rumble of the landslide starts to drown out even the constant
thunder. The roaring winds, carrying an incidental tree, smash
into the wolf from behind, lifting her up and crashing her down
just beyond the edge of the landslide. Soaked, muddy, and pelted
with bruising hail, Voice-of-Accord is only dimly aware of the
broken leg as the mudslide roars past her, less than ten feet
away.
Voice-of-Accord drags onward and downward on three legs, confused,
bedraggled, tail wedged down and completely under her in canine
abjection. Innate stubbornness on autopilot now, she simply exists
as a hunted thing with one directive left: get down. Keep moving.
Overhead, the storm is still howling and howling, as though it
has suddenly developed multiple voices, all yelping in eerie disharmony.
High-pitched cries, mixed with deep baying and the occaisonal
resonant howl, fill the air. This is not the wind.
Voice-of-Accord stumbles and falls and stares upwards with eyes
rolled to whites, dimly listening through the pain of the body
for a sign she came seeking. Is it more than the howl of winds?
What rides the sky? Yes! She tries again to find breath for an
answering howl, will to put her voice into it, Call of the Wyld
that may have the strength to carry even in a world that dwarfs
her to an atom's significance. It's no more than a hail, a greeting,
a worshipful offering, and--for she is still Shadow Lord--a small
defiant declaration of her own existence in the scheme of things.
The yelps sound nearer. Ignorant humans might identify those bone-chilling
voices as werewolves, yet they are actually nothing so friendly
or familiar. Overhead, a long slim shadow-body leaps an impossible
distance. Lightning flashes on the pale form and flares off the
red ears. Others follow it, ignoring the small form below.
Voice-of-Accord howls again, maddened by pain and the chaos of
the wyld now, in place of the Weaver's static grip which held
her for so long. Danger and delight are close kin, at least to
her. Hellloooooooo! she calls to them. And, Take me with you!
One pauses, ears pricked to something - could it be Kelsey's voice?
The slender muzzle tests the air, and the hound leaps towards
the Garou in a few lithe bounds. It moves like the rain and wind,
as though the ground were no more than a reference point, and
pauses, a mere dozen feet away. It regards Kelsey with a cold
dark stare, unmoved.
In some other place, the proud young Garou might strike a commanding
pose, earnestness and boldness making her carriage and tail erect
and fearless. But now she's a wet mop of black and brown fur and
debris, barely standing, and can only blink rapidly at the creature
trying to see it through the raging waters. Child of Thunder,
she calls it, imploringly. The storm. I believe in you.
The hound continues to stare at Kelsey for a long moment, a single
point of complete stillness in the storm. Somehow, its reply arrives
in her mind, not having been conveyed by anything remotely like
language. I do not need your belief. I exist.
Voice-of-Accord holds herself rigid, fighting the urge to shake
her bedraggled coat, holding his gaze for every second she can.
Of course not. But I do.
The eerie dog looks away indifferently, then back at the Garou.
You may not run with us. You cannot keep up. Then it flows into
movement, leaping back into the storm among its brethren.
Voice-of-Accord stares up at the sky, transfixed. But someday
I will. Then she shakes herself, for all the good it won't do,
and returns her attention to the here and now, an immensely more
uncomfortable place than dreams. Time to limp on.
All of a sudden, The wind dies down to merely a hair-whipping,
leaf-dancing level and the storm likewise, the rain pattering
off to a near-normal heavy rain. The comparative quiet is sudden,
like a shout of silence, for all the background noise of the rainstorm.
However, the air is electric with tension, all the more apparent
for the lack of appropriate special effects.
Voice-of-Accord peers upwards again. Eye. I hope. She leans against
a rock and pants shallowly, waiting for her leg to finish knitting
itself before taking advantage of the lull to make another go
of gaining the caern.
Overhead, the clouds are thinning to dark gray, the spiral pattern
of the storm clearly visible in the shaking weak light. Green
lightning dances from peak to peak on Katahdin, then dies down
with a reluctant sizzle. The eye of the storm approaches closer.
The eye of the storm is now directly overhead. Everything seems
to be balanced here, the weight of the entire storm on this still
center, the air heavier than stone. Things seem to glow in the
eerie half-light, as the storm's utterly pitiless gaze stares
downward. Without warning, without a sound, the edges of a pattern
form along the distant black storm clouds. After a moment or two,
the outlne is clear - a vast spiral structure, taking in the fifty
miles of the circumference of the eye with each turn. And on the
structure - movement?
Voice-of-Accord tries, oh she tries to keep moving, in small fits
and starts, drawn up short all too willingly by the mindless spectacle
of power. Or is it mindless? She peers up into the spiral dancing,
thinking of her grandmother's tea leaves swimming across heaven
and wondering at what it portends.
Right overhead, the clouds part to show an impossible glimpse
of blue sky at the very center of the eye. Lightning flickers
up and down the clouds, too distant for thunder to reach the ear.
In the blue gap, at the center of the storm, floats - something.
From the ground, all you can see is a dark speck with irregularly
rounded edges. Then, suddenly, it snaps into perspective - an
enormous island of some sort, suspended in the storm.
Voice-of-Accord's eyes mirror the storm itself: whites grown large,
iris almost all pupil as she stares. How? What? A homeland beyond
reach, nested on the breast of the storm itself? All her pains
seem as small to her as she is to the indifferent weather, at
such a thought.
The lightning ceases. The clouds join together again, swirling
restlessly, as the storm's center reaches Katahdin's peak. The
edges of the stone, the mountain itself seems to glow in the pale
light. Then, the tip of the peak glows white-hot, sending an enormous
beam of sunlight-bright light upwards into the heart of the storm.
Zelda suddenly ceases its slow, ponderous movement, and stops
dead, pinned by the beam.
Muscles protest stiffness as the sopping wolf contemplates the
unfathomable with head thrown back, tongue draped limply from
slack jaws. What? What? She can only stare and shiver violently
now and again.
The brightness increases and increases until it sears the eyes.
Then it winks out, leaving only the dark impression of a tree
on the retina. The storm resumes its movement, whispering wind
bleeding off the eerie silence.
Voice-of-Accord exhales the breath held too long, stars dancing
before her numbed eyes along with the black tree's ghost. Eventually
the rising wind rouses her, and she slogs on... but shelter is
one thing she cannot find this night, nor any trace of caern or
cave. The winds batter her as a leaf in a river all the night,
past thought or comprehension, until her strength fails and she
falls at the heap of some tree to ride out the storm unconscious.