2018.07.22:FieldTrip
| Field Trip | |
|---|---|
| A learning Expedition gets a little further a field than it was meant to. | |
| IC Date | Maybe? |
| IC Time | That's Adorable |
| Players | Branton, Iris(st) |
| Location | Somewhere over the rainbow |
| Prp/Tp | none |
| Spheres | Gaian Garou, M+ |
| Theme Song | Imagine Dragons - Radioactive [1] |
Middle of nowhere! That's where all the fun shit happens. Iris has called Branton out to BumFuk Egypt to tromp around in the woods with her way, way away from the city where they can explore some things and maybe get bit by ticks and get their Lyme disease achievement. Her burn scar looks better and more healed, just a little sun burst where her proverbial third eye is. She's got her bow and quiver along with her, and of course the Big Purse. "Hey!" she greets Branton when he manages to find her, possibly thanks to the kinship doll rather than GPS. "So, I thought you might like some Super Hard Core Wyld Learnin' today. You game?"
Branton nods and grins. Between the kinship doll and and a series of traveling spells he makes it in no time. He's got his frame pack and assorted bits and bobs with him like always "Sounds like a thing to me."
Iris starts them walking in some random direction once Branton's with her, and says, "Awesome! Cause you know, everyone's always 'yay the Wyld!' and all gung ho about it like they are for Gaea, but it occurs to me that a lot of people don't really, like, *get* the Wyld. You know, you look around at a forest like this and you're like, well, *this* is the Wyld. Except that's not even the case. And since you and me, our tribe, we're supposed to be like defenders of the Wyld and what not on top of Gaea, I figure maybe you should learn the finer points about it. Here, let's cross the gauntlet and get a better look, yeah?" And, if Branton's game, she'll step on over easy peasy. Even with fail-magic, she's good at this part.
Branton takes a bit longer than a quick step, like a half an hour or so to get in the proper frame of mind to slip across. Structured meditation and smoking a joint but it gets the job done. When he stands back up he's on the spirit side and he takes a moment to find his balance.
Iris scouted around for safety's sake, but then she finished, got bored, and by the time Branton's crossed the gauntlet and joined her, she's balancing on one hand on a rock, wobbling a little but keeping her balance while practicing being bendy. Just cause. You never know when that skill might come in handy! Course, as soon as she sees the kinfolk, she gets distracted, looses her balance and lets out a little shriek while falling off the rock and going ass over tea kettle. "Ow, crap." she mutters while getting up and dusting off.
The forest, of course, looks largely the same as it did on the other side, although much more populated by spirits. Some trees and stones aren't in the same spot as on the physical plane, some colors are different, but it's still relatively similar.
Branton grins and looks around, since he has the full spectrum of reality piercing senses it doesn't change a super lot for him. When Iris falls he winces "You alright?"
"Ouch, yeah, yeah I'm good." Iris says while picking twigs out of her dreadlocks. "...Where were we? I forgot. ...OH RIGHT, the Wyld, right. Okay so, misconception number one, is that what you're seeing around you, this plane or that plane, isn't strictly the Wyld. This is a product of the whole triat all together. Creation, structure, and death. Even here in the umbra. Spirits come, spirits go, they awaken, slumber, it's just a whole cycle, you know? Except when things get corrupt and throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing, but that's neither here nor there. Point is, nature does not *specifically* equal Wyld, but it *is* the closest thing to that part of the triat, the same way that cities are closest to the Weaver, get what I mean?"
Branton nods at Iris and considers "The difference between with an I or with a Y. Related but not the same. And there really isn't anything that's absolutely one thing or another."
"Right." Iris says with a grin, "The thing about the Wyld, with a Y, is that is' raw creation and chaos. It's in the soil, it gives all this life potential to *be*, right, but it's the Weaver that defines the seed, makes all pine trees look more or less the same, makes all squirrels more or less the same, but the chaos, the potential and the creativity is all around us. Raw Wyld is... *terrifying*, Branton. You can't trust it. I mean yes, we champion for the Wyld because it's getting the short end of the stick, but while it can benefit us, lift us up and do amazing things, it ain't your friend. Raw Wyld is the F5 tornado they call the Finger of God that streaks through middle America on a rampage of mindless, formless mayhem. It's the typhoon and hurricane, it's the tsunami. This little guy here," she points out the colorful string weaving and wiggling through her dreads, "This is a raw Wyld spirit, but it's one of the *few* friendly and playful sorts."
Branton listens serious to the explanation nods and grins at Iris when she points out String Friend. Then he nods to her "So sentient seeming Wyld manifestations are like....a Natural Disaster looking for a place to happen?"
Iris waggles her head in mostly-agreement, saying, "I wanna say yes, but at the same time, that'd be putting too much predictability on them. The big hugantic ones, yeah, I think you can safely say that about them and not be wrong, and as terrible as we humans might find them, they're just.. stirring shit up. I mean, okay a hurricane is bad, it ruins things and people die, but at the same time, that terrible storm is carrying life giving dust and spores from an ocean away and breathing life back into the nature of the area while simultaneously taking a pot shot at the Weaver's structure. A tsunami wrecks things indiscriminately, land or sea life, but it's doing the same thing, putting the sea into the land and the land into the sea, and out of all that ruination comes potential and life. Also I think the Wyld in general just *really* doesn't like humans. Like, even homids get the glare from the Wyld where the lupus born don't."
Branton nods at Iris "That makes sense. Because we tend to like to name things and figure out things and define things. And that removes posibilities by selecting one over the rest. But that makes the argument for the weaver not being all bad because being stuck in the moment of choice without making one is horseshit. You never get anywhere and eventually you gotta shit or get off the pot."
"Exactly! You're so good at this game!" Iris beams proudly at Branton for Getting It. "That's why there has to be a balance, which is largely pretty damned busted. When there's a three way balance, it all just *works*. Too much of *any* of the three is a bad thing, but with equal parts, we end up with something beautiful. Wyld spirits make their irritation with the human race known through mockery spirits and manifestations. Think like... The Mothman, with most of the body of a man but dominating moth-like features. That's a middle finger at both the Weaver and at Human kind since, like, it mocks our form and also the Weaver I guess tried to obliterate every last moth spirit in creation. THOSE guys are the original rebels. Or like, adorable little fawns with human faces that sneer and talk like they have a bad case of Tourret's syndrome. If they're not just formless and bizarre then they tend to be some mocking mix of human and nature in some way, and they work in super weird, very mysterious ways that don't always seem... right. Like Mothman striking people with prophecy that they can not hope to undo, and they can't be believed. But, even though a prophecy can't be averted and it might ruin someone's life and sanity, others are gifted with a sense of the chaos of the universe, they see their failings, even if it's after the fact."
Branton considers for a moment "Mothman...I think I've seen that movie." Then he considers "But they can't make it too unbreakable, That's like....pretty specifically the Weaver's jam isn't it?"
"Right, structure and solidity isn't the Wyld's bag at all." Iris agrees with a nod, "But when you're talking about prophecy, that's... Time is fluid, you know. Past, present, and future aren't all laid out in a straight line. Aside from the concept of alternate dimensions, you're also talking about moments in time connected like a marsh is connected by thousands and thousands of streams. The Sands of Time is a spirit of the Wyld, and it's whole thing is just, like, being time. Stuff's not always set in stone, but when you go in to the little things, one point and one action, sometimes there's just nothing you can do about it. Like a bridge collapsing, right. The moth man comes, he tells you there will be a disaster, people will die. You can't get anyone to believe you because, well, that's insane sounding and also you have no specifics. But then a bridge collapses on the day you said it would, and the amount of people you said would die have died. On one hand, by having been a crazy person, now suddenly people are weirded out by your spate of prophecy and have a moment of doubt for the law and order of their simple reality, and that's a blow against the Weaver. The destruction of the bridge is another one, whether it was destroyed by something supernatural or just the spiders were kept at bay so they wouldn't notice the degradation, that makes doubt about the safety and sterility of people's ordered little world. That doubt ripples out across all the pattern web and weakens it, *just* a tiny bit, but that tiny bit is enough to give birth to conspiracy theories and cryptid theories, people make youtube vids and people listen to those vids, and some of them agree that that is possible. If everything is created by belief, then belief can also undermine the stagnancy that's coming over the world."
Branton takes out another joint, and sparks it lit with a flicker of power "I am not nearly high enough for temporal mechanics to make sense. I got most of that though. The real question I can see being asked is would the bridge have collapsed on its own or did the prophecy magic from the wyld spirit work like a hex and make it collapse."
"Yeah, that's, like... A whole different realm of mind fuckery, right there." Iris agrees with a sagely nod for how screwed up trying to understand time and far seeing is. "And yeah, even that question right there, that's a little gift of the Wyld. Think about this, find doubt in the system, wonder on possibility and make your brain fire the way it's not supposed to. REALLY understanding, that's just not entirely possible for us, I don't think, because like, the Wyld isn't an understandable thing, even at its core. I think that's why there's so many weird spirits of the Wyld, like this string, that really seem to have no point what so ever for existing, yet it does, and because it does, it's somehow important to the balance and the spiritual eco system in ways that are-- Did you hear that?" Iris stops suddenly and perks her ears. Just when she's probably thinking she imagined it, there's an actual sound, distant and faint, but it sounds like a keening scream. Of what, that's hard to say.
Branton pauses and listens when Iris does, trying to figure out what the fuck that was. He of course takes a drag on the joint because that'll help.
It'll totally help. Iris could use a little help too, for that matter. Steal, puff puff, return. "Oh shit, there it is again!" she says, trying to hone in on the direction. She does so and take like three quick steps in that direction before abruptly face planting when she trips over a tree root. "Ow." Wyld Touched plus fail magic, that's where it's at. Once she's back on her feet again, "Okay, scouting and possible rescue, take two!" she says, and starts them off towards the sound at a quick pace. No running pell mell into doom though, but you know, not wasting time, either.
Branton moves along to follow Iris, not activating any of his speedy powers or spells but doing his best to keep up none the less. Staying alert also.
The sounds become clearer and more numerous as the pair move through the forest, easier to hone in on and follow. As they near, lesser nature spirits pass them, running the other direction and fleeing the sounds of a fight. The scene unfolds before them as they get close enough to see through the forest, like a weirdly timed practical example of some of the things those two had been talking about. Beneath tree branches ahead of the Furies, the bodies of a few dead spiders litter the ground, on their backs and legs curled, shining like crystal and steel, and each ranging from the sizes of large dogs to horses. Only two things are left standing, hurling charms at each other, stabbing with pointy things and shrieking, one massive, wounded spider of the same strange body makeup, and one um. Woman? Maybe? She looks like what someone on an incredibly powerful acid trip might think up as a nature fairy. Butterfly wings that shift and change from one beat to the next, one of them hanging funny and keeping her earth bound. Antennae, vines curling through and over her skin, sharp teeth and a feral attack.
Just as the pair are drawing up to this weird scene, the spider manages to bite the fairy thingie nice and good with a sick crunching and squelching sound. She screams and drops to the ground, badly injured, her chest seemingly torn open and leaking something sparkly and green. The spider then begins to limpingly try and wrap her in webbing.
Branton sees what looks to him at first glance as a woman in danger. And he has certain reflexes and scowls, throwing a hand out towards the spider as it limps towards the nature wyld thing. His fist clenches and one of the damaged legs bursts into flames. So not only is it useless to the spider its now dangerous and hurting the spider.
The spider doesn't like that and now there's no chance of being friends, Branton! NONE! Screeching, the spider does a flailing hobbling dance, trying to escape the fire, except that the damned burning leg is still attached. With that kind of diff to soak, yeah, this poor bastard is doomed. Its body begins to melt and drip, and a few neighboring plants catch aflame as it dances. Within moments it's collapsed to the ground, already gravely injured and now burned to death. "Don't let it spread! It'll attract elementals!" Iris says while rushing towards the lady thingie, and producing a small knife to try cutting through the world's toughest cocooning and get it off the still figure. Slowly, the dead spiders begin to fade out, evaporating in slumber and going... elsewhere, until reformed.
Branton concentrates and waves his hand, shrinking the flames that caught down to too small to continue and the smolder out. After he's sure they aren't going to flare up again he turns back to Iris "Would an enchanted blade do better? I don't know if silver is bad for this kind of spirit though."
"I dunno, maybe? JESUS this is tough!" It totally is too, and it's likely to be just marginally better for Branton, but the webbing is basically steel strands. Regardless, without anything trying to stab them to death, the two of them together can peel the cocooning away from the damsel in distress. As it turns out, it really only looks like a lady from a distance, up close, it's more like a lady shaped construct of plant life run amok; mossy hair and light colored bark-y skin, four arms rather than two and with the wrong number of fingers on each, something of a fox-like appearance to her face, and of course her blood is more like magically sparkling plant sap than actual blood. Oh and she has a huge hole in her chest, to boot! Nearby is something that looks like a cross between a massive raw ruby and a really weird fruit, sort of fleshy and rocky at the same time, if you can imagine such a thing, clearly broken and mangled. And she's still alive! Hooray! Sorta. "Haaa...rrrr...ttttt...." she gasps in a weak, definitely dying breath, one of her four hands moving to the hole in her chest, becoming slick with her sappy blood. Iris responds in a super helpful, "Holy shit!" and looks both fearful and at a loss.
Branton picked a side, so even if the spirit isn't actually a lady he's on their side for the moment at least. He is smart enough not to touch the heart crystal with his bare hands, he whistles a tune and gestures at it and a little puff of air floats it over within reach of the spirit.
Iris seems to be of the same sort of mind about this whole 'let's not touch it with hands' thing, and uses a stick from nearby to very carefully and gently guide the 'heart' back to the poor spirit's chest, all while complaining, "Shit, I don't know how to heal spirits!" The best thing she can think to do is pour her Gnosis into the creature, doing an essence mega dump that'll probably leave her drained and exhausted later. The stick, where it touched the heart, bursts into bloom, sprouting flowers and tendrils of weird vines that wiggle and curl. This kind of freaks the Theurge out a bit and she drops the stick! But the broken heart and the donated gnosis do seem to help, returning a bit of color to the thing's bark-y skin, though not enough for honest health. "Broken!" the creature rasps, her voice a bit better now, some how musical and tinged with the buzzing of insect wings all at once. She looks a little panicked as well for a moment there, eyeing Branton and Iris like they might be dangerous, or troublesome, but when you're choices are 'trust these weirdos' or 'death', you tend to go for the former.
Her sappy hand comes away as she mutters things in a nonsensical, alien tongue, the air starting to feel prickly and tingly with unknown power. The woman's color drains again as she uses some of what was given to her to enact some bizarre charm. Her goopy hand presses down onto the ground and it literally spits open, a long crack of ground that just ceases to exist, falling into dust and base particles to open a small chasm. "Go." she pleads weakly. Within the chasm is a strange, shifting light whose source can not be seen through a dewy mist that obscures just how deep this might be. Within moments, spiders appear out of nowhere, rapidly and desperately beginning to knit the chasm closed again, taking dust and base particles to create 'standard forest floor'.
Branton isn't sure what's going on exactly but really that hasn't stopped him often. He glances at the strange light and back to Iris "Are we helping them in there or do they want us to go in there?"
"Heart.. Get.." the foxy faced, fangy plant lady rasps before slumping a bit, run out of energy. Iris looks pretty dumb founded, this is NOT something she's ever encountered or dealt with before, and her brain is blowing fuses left and right! "Uh.." she says, looking back and forth between all the things. "Injured spirit.. thing, heart thingie looks broken, chasm to funky colors, weaver spiders rushing to close it up.. Uhhhhhhh! Shit! I vote we get in the hole before it's closed up again, sounds like we're doing an organ transplant? I guess?" She stands up, saying, "Don't worry, Lady!" before issuing some screeches of her own, summoning owl spirits from the surrounding area. Not a ton, but a few is good enough, and of several local types. <Protect this lady from the spiders.> she says to them in their owl-y spirit tongue, hoists her bow and quiver and tries not to look too terrified when she takes Branton's hand. "Pretty sure we don't have time to call for backup, so uh, let's hope for the best. Jump on three?"
Branton nods at Iris in agreement and lets her take his hand before counting "One...Two..."
When we last left our intrepid heroes, they had stumbled across the end of a harsh battle between Weaver and Wyld. Branton had set fire to the last remaining war spider before it could permanently destroy some sort of odd dryad-like thing. Having rescued the damsel in distress from calcifying webs and discovered that she was more of a chaotic plant creature with a mockingly, vaguely, human visage. Worse, they discover that her heart had been torn out and partially destroyed. Branton wisely decided not to touch the ruined heart or any of her other fluids when returning it to her via magic, and that, along with a donation of gnosis from Iris, helped to stabilize her a bit. Only for a short time though. Realizing this was a bandaid on a cracking dam, the spirit used what reserves of magic she had reacquired to open a rift in the ground, breaking reality to form a small chasm filled with mist and strange lights. Spiders came almost *immediately* to mend the rift, not daring to step a foot past its edge but working furiously to close it. With time rapidly running out, they knew the spirit wouldn't have the strength to try this again, that there was no way they could summon backup in time to get in. With mere seconds left on the clock, the Fury pair took a leap of faith, jumping in on the count of three and hoping against hope that the new heart the spirit wanted would be in there... somewhere...
The pair falls through the rift surrounded by the oscillating colors of a mist that tastes, weirdly enough, exactly like raspberries. They feel like they're being pulled, stretched, squished, like dough as they plummet. Time escapes them, neither could say if it's seconds or hours that pass as they fall. They had jumped down into the ground, but when they emerge, they're no longer falling, but being shot straight up into the air out of what appears to be a completely ordinary little mole hill. Coming back down, they land hard and in a tangle of mild bruises and splayed limbs. When they've a mind to, they can view the strange world they've fallen into...
They've landed on a small island floating in mid air amidst several others, most of them connected by massive vines and roots. Some rise higher and higher, while others stay more or less level with this, and others still are lower and lower. (If you've ever seen Avatar, think of the floating stones of Pandora) The sky can rarely seem to decide on what color it wants to be; brilliant blue, twilight, sunset oranges, changing far more rapidly than it should. Clouds race across the sky in different directions, defying normality, and the moon is massive, full and beautiful... except when it seems to stretch and pull apart like bubbles, showing all her auspices separately across the insane sky. Down below their island is a vast and beautiful landscape of chaos. Before their very eyes, an entire snow capped mountain range in the distance suddenly dissolves in a cyclone of stones and dirt. A distant ocean geysers upwards and forms a big, wiggly water tree that just hangs out there. That may have actually been a whale that just fell out of one of the watery 'branches' and plummeted back into the ocean. All around them, vast, *massive* changes are made on the fly, a shivering forest of strange trees tells of an earthquake, and within seconds, a whole new mountain has sprung up.
Iris, in her wise and Theurgely way, says, "Hooooly fuckballs."
Branton stands there looking around at the weirdness they landed in and comments "Its times like this that I really understand why getting high as fuck is part of getting my ass to the Umbra."
An OOC note on where we're at: Welcome to the Flux Realm! Chance and chaos rule this realm and everything within it, including us. All rules of normality have been left behind, and you should keep that in mind during role play. Simply put, this is an opportunity to have some fun that you can't normally have, and to mess with your character in ways you normally can not. One of the highlights of this realm's rules concerns shapeshifting; while the impact of that will obviously hit Iris, Branton should not feel left out of the fun, for in this realm, he is not and can not be static. In leu of not having actual shapeshifting abilities, feel free to use your spirit heritage instead and, well, 'shift' a bit at times. Sometimes when you mean to, sometimes when you do not. Hell, change colors, partial shift at awkward moments, whatever sounds fun. Do something silly or outrageous with your magical effects, or maybe just occasionally lose all the bones in your left foot. Whatever floats your flying boat. :)
Iris nods slowly and just *stares*, wide eyed and maybe, MAYBE, freaking the ever loving fuck out. Usually there's a *plan* to go somewhere, but this just sorta *happened*, and her brain is misfiring all of a sudden. "I um. Uh." It takes several minutes before she can really *speak*, let alone think. "How the hell are we supposed to find a spirit heart in *this*? Where the hell do we even start looking?" She looks to Branton then and says, "If I get you killed, I am *so* fucking sorry. This was not the plan, I swear!"
Branton is amazed as he looks around, for once seeing the chaos of surging primal energy on the outside instead of feeling it from his insides "Since I learned these spells from spirits they should work here. They may not show what I think though so....It'll be better than nothing I guess. A spell to detect anomalies of power. It'll show us to the closest thing that stands out from the local background energy."
Iris tries to get a friggin grip on herself, and when Branton starts talking strategy, that *really* seems to help ground her a bit. "Right, yeah, that's a great idea! I- AH!" Iris is super startled when her pants begin twitching around on her suddenly, but never fear! It's just the color string getting agitated! It slides out of her pocket and begins to grow, becoming more of a big huge color tube than just a little string. It, for one, *loves* the choice of vacation spots and starts swooping around and having some fun close by. "That scared the shit out of me. Okay, okay you get started on your spell, and I'm going to see if I can attune myself a little bit to the realm and see if there's any interesting knowledge to be gained, then we'll see if we can't get down off this uh. Floating rock. That's totally floating. In the air." Yeah, she's getting away from the edge for now, flight ability or not.
Branton has a bronze coin on a black cord that he takes out and uses as a pendulum, setting it swinging as he murmurs in the classical greek he uses for spellwork >>loose and bind, time and tide, seek and find, heart and hide.<<
Iris sits down and tries to center herself. Which is not easy, and in fact becomes less easy when her form starts changing without her telling it to do so. She's sitting there, trying to be zen, when her legs start to meld together and her arms disappear into her sides, scales growing over her body and her clothes melding into her thanks to the rite of talisman dedication. This throws a huge money wrench into her zen, and she FREAKS THE FUCK OUT. "Where the hell are my legs! WHAT THE FUCK!" although, if you can't speak Snake, then.. It just sounds like a literal hissy fit to Branton. Iris-Anaconda rampages around a bit, not in frenzy but god damned close to it as her own emotional state goes as bat shit as the rest of the realm.
Meanwhile, Branton's spell goes off way better! There are several huge spouts of Wyld energy close by, and the closest one is directly below them. It's hard to see without leaning out over the edge of their floating island to try and see past crags of rock, but it's down there. It looks like the opposite of a black hole, a swirling vortex of light that actually hurts a bit to look directly about, slooooowly moving across the land where it sucks up everything in its path and spits out entirely different... stuff. The second nearest point is a bit farther off into what looks like a prehistoric jungle down on the main land beneath the floating islands.
Branton opens his eyes and instead of a faint glow or smolder like they usually do in the umbra, they are actually on fire. He stumbles when the coin on his cord doubles in size and turns to lead "So much weirdness. Two choices it looks like. A vortex of somethingorother over that wayish or a patch of jungle way the heck down there. If that's down. Not even sure to be honest."
Iris-Anaconda shakes her big head side to side like crazy, like she can shake the form off. And then all of a sudden, BAMPH! She is Iris again, sprayed on the ground and AAAAAARRRRRRG!ing with frustration. She manages to avoid going *actually* insane in here though, which is just great. She just lays there for a minute though, and finally achieves her Zen. She gets herself together around the same time Branton is starting to speak to her and says, "There's an actual fucking *vortex*??" with astonishment in her tone, "Okay we do not want to get close to a Wyld spirit that big, that's for damned sure! Okay, way down there, you say? Okay... Okay I think we can um...C'mere." While she beckons Branton over, she staters at some of the vines and roots trailing off the edge of their island and reaches out to poke them with her gnosis. New tendrils spring to life, braiding themselves together as they stretch off in the direction Branton had indicated, out and down, away from the vortex in a great long, not particularly straight bridge complete with stiff leaves like a halfassed guard rail on either side. "I'm not sure how long those'll stay like that."
Branton nods at Iris and heads out onto the bridge, not wasting any time when he starts growing curling satyr horns and his skin turns tim curry devil red "Lets not waste any time then. If the bridge gives out hopefully my boots work the same here or I can finish a spell in time before I hit the ground."
"...I can't tell if you're horny, or just want to capture a unicorn for its horn." Iris says while starting off down the vine bridge with the kin, snerking and making a ridiculous movie reference at the same time. "Okay, so from what I sort of gleaned while we were up there, we've got a lot of problems, but also a few benefits while we're here. First of all, all this craziness out there won't ever stop, *but*, it settles down in the immediate vicinity of travelers, so we should avoid having a volcano suddenly appear under our feet. Our forms are... Obviously going to be a little weird, we're going to lose a lot of control over that, but if you stop and consciously *force* yourself back into the form you know, then you can get back to normal. Another thing, we can't control any of the creatures in here. Anything we do that might tame or control things in the normal world isn't gonna work here. I can't stop a rampaging flock of owls or anything. There's also some very limited control of the environment itself, kinda. Like making this bridge. There's no saying how well or how long that control lasts, but it's still possible. You might be able to do it too, but it takes some mental planning and concentration. Oh, and about our forms. This isn't just the shapeshifting, there's conscious control, but if you try and do something crazy, like.. I dunno, be made of living silver or something, you're *gonna* have a problem back in the normal world. Dunno what, but I really get the feeling that trying to exert *too* much control here is going to back lash hard when we go home."
Branton nods at Iris carefully as he listens and his eye flames dim slightlyy "I'll just push back a little bit if it starts to impare function. Reminds me a lot of surfing, gotta ride it out."
"Exactly, yeah." Iris agrees, while below them the vortex sucks up a swatch of jungle and plants a glittering desert of weird shaped rocks in its place. "Aside from this place being a sort of contained embodiment of Wyld and chaos, I think it's also to sort of.. I dunno, like teach travelers not to be so damned rigid, maybe? Go with the flow and get acquainted with the unpredictable for once. It's still fucking terrifying though, as much as it is beautiful." Iris begins to grow feathers in her hair without noticing, and their winding vine bridge finally decides its had enough of being horizontal and goes into full on race track mode, including a loop de loop a little ways down. "I feel like we're going to end up with road rash. I don't think I want to trust flight here, though. Gravity doesn't really seem like it means much here..." she says while sitting down, preparing to slide their way towards their goal.
Branton also sits down and prepares for zoomies "I'd thought about that. A spell to travel from point a to point b while leaving the how as undefined as possible other than 'not harmful' would give the best odds. Offer it up like a negotiation to the realm's governing intelligence. Ish."
"But what if 'not harmful' means we goth get turned into caterpillars!" Iris says, and then scoot scoot scoots until she's sliding down the vines at top speed and REALLY hoping she doesn't just shoot right off the edge of a curve. On the way down something huge moves in the distance and she points that way. Imagine a dog playing in a sprinkler and having the bet time *ever*. Now imagine that dog is larger than mountains, and the sprinkler is the chaotic spray of infinite physic defying natural disasters and wonders. Add in to that the dog having no particular control over its form what so ever. "I think that's the governing intelligence..." Iris sounds worried! And now for the loop de loop, which is of course terrifying and super awesome at the same time, and then they're both shot off the abrupt end of the vine path and slammed into a tree! Don't worry though, the tree has the consistency of marshmallows, they're both fine.
Branton leans and rides along the turns and starts laughing in astonishment as he watches the wyld doggo play and frolic, not seeming worried at all. Then there's the crash and the giggling. Not from Branton, from the tree. He looks at it grinning "You alright Iris?"
"No! I keep feel a tail trying to grow and I'm literally trying to keep my ass together!" Iris complains in a pouty sort of way. Not that she didn't enjoy the ride down, she totally did, but it was stressful and stress is trying to inspire a shift of who knows what sort. The giggling god damned tree seems to find this *hilarious*, and earns a bit of a glare from the Fury. Her rage is a little wyld in here as well, let's be honest. In defense of her grr face, the tree drops a mother fucking cocoanut on her head, which breaks open. Skin of the seed pod gone (somehow) and leaving the big brown nut visible, it smacks right onto Iris's head and damned near knocks her ass out, but being doused in coconut milk helps keep her conscious when she falls. "What?!" is what she gets out while rubbing her soggy head. Meanwhile, another thing has fallen out of the cracked open nut; a book! It looks like a small, green/brown, leather-bound journal with greenish hued pages. There's a branded series of decorative garou glyphs on the front.
Branton tries his best to not laugh at Iris getting bonked and a laugh track plays from the speakers of some off camera studio audience. The book grabs his attention and he peers at it carefully "Oh that's new."
The Glyphs translate or or less into a symbol for the Rushing Waves pack, surrounded by the glyph couplings that make up the members' names, with one of them crossed out by a burned line. Red_Moon (Ahroun), Silent-Stalker (Ragabash), Grinds-The-Bones (Philodox) and Runs-on-the-Wind (Galliard) are left intact, while Morning's-Calm (Theurge) has been crossed out. A quick glance at the pages says this is written in a personal journal style by the Galliard Runs-on-the-Wind, AKA Patricia.
Do you read the journal?
Branton Branton will totally look through the journal and explains to Iris what it is "The journal of a garou pack's galliard, I wonder how it got here."
Patricia, a homid, seems to have grown up doing the Dear Diary thing and has continued to do so through her life as a Garou. The journal details the exploits of her pack, basic life observations, as well as the woman's own personal thoughts. Pages detail battles the pack were in, various challenges and trials that slowly but steadily carried them through their ranks from Cliath upwards. Victory, loss, pain and jubilation are all spelled out on the pages. As Branton moves through the older chapters of a tightly bonded pack and gets towards the more current pages, he discovers that the pack had gone through their toughest challenge yet, assaulting a heavily guarded Wyrm building in order to rescue several spirits being trapped within and being corrupted into something awful, which somehow was affecting the surrounding blocks in various terrible ways. While ultimately successful, they lost friends while on the job. Their Theurge had died while freeing the captives, and their Philodox was badly wounded, left crippled by the end, and paralyzed from the waist down.
As Grinds-the-Bones began to succumb to severe depression and, as the Galliard was surmising, the dreaded state of Harano, she and her other pack mates scoured their sept looking for answers and a way to help their brother. Healing rites and gifts couldn't fix him, and each failed attempt was one more blow to hope, until he seemed like he couldn't be roused for anything. When all hope seemed gone, the pack rallied for a crazy chance, some vague and unrepeatable rumor of a tail that their Ragabash had heard, that maybe they could save their brother with healing in the very realm of life and Wyld itself. So they set off with their unresponsive Philodox to find and breech the Flux realm in a last ditch effort to save him...(more to come)
Branton is sharing what he reads with iris and doesn't stop reading.
This journal was written years ago, some time during the early 80's.
Various snippets of entries, in order and spanning the course of three weeks of early spring:
"I can't stand this any more and I don't know what to do. The lupus don't seem to be as badly impacted as I feel, but maybe they do in their own, stoic way. We have to find an answer, I can't stand seeing him like this. Every time I look at him I just want to cry, and I know that's not helping him either. He's started whimpering in his sleep and muttering about the winter wolf. I'm scared if we can't find something that will fix his spine soon, we might have to put him on suicide watch...
Another failure today. The Uktena we came all this way to see, she has no idea. It took days to prepare that ritual and hours to carry out, but there's not one wiggle of one toe yet. I can hear my brother crying very quietly in his tent. He'd hate it if anyone heard him shamed like this.
I'm scared to death to say the word 'success' now, after all those failed rituals and baffled healers. We've fed him tonics and herbs, undergone rituals and great gifts but nothing has worked. This crazy little Theurge at the sept we're visiting, she said something I'm afraid to believe, that somewhere there's a realm overflowing with life, that broken things might be mended there... Or destroyed altogether, I suppose. But what choice is there? We're going tomorrow morning, I don't think any of us cares how ridiculous this whole thing might be. We might die! But better to die trying...
We made it. I can't believe it but we made it! This is by far the most beautiful and terrifying place I've ever seen, I almost don't want to leave at all! We're camped beside a stream with flying fish tonight, the trees sparkle over head, and something keeps giggling in the bushes, but there's no sign of danger yet. My poor brother half moon hasn't even noticed yet, he just lies there on the ground and stares at nothing. Is he already too far gone? I know he thinks himself useless now and better off dead, but... Look at where we are!
Silent-Stalker brought back news today. I don't know how, but she's really taken to those dragonfly wings of hers. She said she spotted a tree with glowing fruits shaped like cartoon hearts. Sounds ridiculous, but then again, I was an otter earlier today so I guess anything's possible. Maybe they'll help, like a golden apple or something?
I don't know what happened, this little flower squirted Red-Moon in the face and he just.. he just *lost* it. I've never seen a frenzy that bad! I've been sitting on this ridge for over two hours now and he still hasn't stopped wrecking things down there.
Red-Moon is.. not okay.
Silent-Stalker should have come back by now. Lunch time by a rock shaped like a dolphin, she went ahead to scout our road, but she's not back yet. Not that I need protecting, I have my pack. Red-Moon is starting to scare me though. He just.. talks to himself now, full conversations all on his own. Grinds-the-Bones still just lays there and stares, but sometimes he starts laughing too and won't stop. I'm starting to have a bad feeling about this.
- Nothing but cursing and explatives*
This place not nice. Red-Moon GONE. Grinds Bone so annoying.silent not here. SO MUCH BUGS! STUPID BUGS. See the pretty tree, end of canyon.
- Written entirely in sloppy Garou glyphs, doesn't make a ton of sense, something about slugs and flying fish*
Last ten pages are shredded and unwritten on*
Branton frowns at the book as he finishes and looks over at Iris "Well that didn't end well."
Branton after a moment's consideration "Do you think it really happened that way? Should we try to bring it out with us?"
Iris looks both touched and horrified as the diary story is read out loud to her. "I... I don't know. I mean.. We're in a place that defies logic, maybe.. Maybe they lost their logic on the way, or their minds, or.. I don't know. We should take it back though, yeah. I mean if we can. They had families and friends, they'd want to know what happened if they went missing out in the spirit world. On the bright side, we know we have to be extra careful and that somewhere, probably, maybe, there's a tree growing hearts on it. Shouldn't be *too* far if the diary is here. Course, nothing here is normal.. I hope it's not actually a thousand miles away.
Branton nods at Iris and considers his surroundings "And a tree with hearts growing on it is where we'd find one for that spirit. I suppose...as much as anything here makes sense that does."
"Right?" Iris agrees with a laugh, "At the very least it's the right shape! And that lady *did* look an awful lot like a tree lady so.. I mean. Maybe."
The trek after stowing the book away somewhere for safe keeping is, of course, weird. Sometimes it seems almost normal, like a walk through unseen wilderness, even if none of the plants seemed terribly familiar. Normal until curling spires of stone just start pushing their way up out of the ground for no apparent reason. At another point, the air becomes so thick it's like walking through neck deep water, until the pair realize they can actually swim through it as though it *were* water, but with the added bonus of slightly labored breathing. Hey look, flying fish! They zip around through the air and sparkle in the ever changing light of this world. They see big jags of land pop themselves out of the ground to join other floating islands in the sky, a waterfall that flows upwards instead of down, strange two headed animals that never existed on earth, and all the while the pair keep accidentally shifting parts of themselves when their concentration on self slips.
After spending a full half hour (or nine years) fighting to get a bird's beak to not be a part of her face and nearly losing her temper a few times, the pair comes to the edge of what seems to be a huge crater. Within it is a veritable garden of Eden of lush greenery, sparkling streams, misty covers here and there and leafy canopies. There's a small hill towards the center where Branton's visual 'X marks the spot' fires rage. "Is that it? Oh please let that be it!" Iris says of the distant sparkles and vague tree shape she can make out way over there.
Branton holds up the coin, which is small and tin now, and it pulls that direction "It totally is. By the way, when we get home remind me to show you art of the Sorceress from He-Man. You'll find it hillarious /then/ I'm sure."
"Is it going to be one of those things that I'll laugh about but still feel super embarrassed by?" Iris asks with a laugh, and starts to try and carefully make her way down into the crater. Of course, there aren't any hiking trails, and they're not lucky enough to stumble across some natural path leading down into it. Nope, it's climbing down boulders and hanging vines!
Branton normally doesn't think of himself as a tarzan, for a garou kinfolk his outdoors skills are minimal but at least he's fit and his boots give him a long jump to die for. At one point as he swings on a vine from one tree to the next he starts humming the 'George of the Jungle' theme song.
Once the pair are down on the ground, which feels weirdly... sticky... There's the tree! Like literally, it's all of thirty feet away now, rather than WAAAAAAY over there. Just a quaint little hill of grass and flowers beyond a nice little picture book stream. Its view is a little bit obscured by trees of the deep tropics between the Furies and the heart tree itself, but it can be seen enough to be sure that's definitely it.
HOORAY! Of course, now that the quest is nearing its end, something is bound to go very wrong. So, naturally, that's exactly what happens. There's a strange, growling, clicking sound from the dense brush nearby, and again from a different direction. Out from the brush come.. Are those garou? They almost look like it, once you look past weird deformities and augmentation. One crinos garou's fur is grass green and spotted with tiny pink flowers, antlers grow from its head and there's a good seven fingers per large, clawed hand. Another looks like it *should* be a hispo wolf, but it's covered in bronze scales, a cat's muzzle instead of a wolf's, with three eyes and more than one tail. the last creature seems like its shift halted somewhere between crinos and hispo, a hunched and crazed looking beast that whispers to itself quietly in broken garou and gibberish. It looks like it were carved from red sandstone and living branches seem to jut out of it at weird angles, each tipped with a moving human eye. Which is good, because there's no eyes in its friggin face.
Ambushed!
The coppery cat/wolf/whatever rushes forward and attempts to bite Branton's attractive face right off!
Branton back steps quick, the enchantment on his boots blessing his reflexes with quickness. He whips out his snap baton in a flash and sweeps up, catching the wyld mutant's jaw and ducking to the side like an action hero.
Meanwhile Iris has to put most of her mind on shifting and knowing what she wants to be, it's a hell of a lot easier AND harder to shift in this place, at the same time! She was going for Crinos but accidentally over shoots and ends up in Hispo instead. This whole thing is just enough distraction to allow the grass green Galliard to attempt to rush her! They both tumble a bit and end up in a bit of a tangle as the wolf grabs her. Just then, an ear piercing, *awful* scream of rage and pain issues from the warped Ahroun, and all four of the battling wolves (and kin) are knocked back several feet and thrown onto the ground, where they're left to try and clear the ringing in their ears and get their wits back about them.
The scaled whatever that used to be a Ragabash opens its mouth and its tongue stabs outwards, long and red, and wickedly pointed like a barb as it aims for Branton's center mass!
Branton is parrying frantically as the mutated garou that's attacking him lashes out with their sharp pointy tongue. Tentacle avoidance isn't in the standard training package so he gets plinked but the fine metal of his chain mail stops the stab after the blow tears his jacket and shirt. He shifts the baton to his left hand and frowns, he'd crafted the sword to fight the Wyrm and the garou that serve it but Iris had just explained that with the Triat unbalanced they're all enemies and this isn't a time to be gentle.
Red-Moon, the eye covered crazy schizophrenic, stops paying attention after his blasting scream, starting to snarl and snap at nothing as he argues with himself. YES, we HAVE to murder them because peanut butter and penguins are the eye of the pyramid, GAWD, why do you not GET this?? They all have P's!
Iris goes all fighter wolf on the Galliard before the grassy, flowery thing has her wits back again, lunging to try and get a grip on the creature and get the upper hand in this fight. It more or less works, Iris gets atop the crinos Galliard and there's blood running down its coat now where Iris's teeth have sunk in. Seems she agrees that now is not the time to be gentle.
Mid battle, Silent-Stalker attempts to get the upper hand on Branton, and begins to shape shift. It's messy and weird, and while it doesn't go WRONG, per se, she ends up smaller and less armored than she would have liked while Branon has a moment to himself. She looks scrawny, not exactly emaciated but clearly she's missed some meals, or else spent way, way too much time in zero G.
Branton the battle is moving very fast, and not having a chance to set up in advance is illustrating how much ambushes suck and already giving Branton some product ideas as he channels a glut of power into the sword and stabs at Silent-stalker with silver, it skims across the poor creatures hide and raises a sizle hiss of smoke but not more than a fleshwound. But still, silver.
Iris and her Galliard pal seem oddly well matched, but Iris is the one taking small chunks out of the grassy crinos's throat. Still, those big seven fingered hands manage to pry her jaws open and break the locking hold the Fury had on her throat.
Still sizzling from the swipe from Branton, Silent-Stalker is still settling into form when Red-Moon suddenly RUSHES! Snarling with its branch-eyes focused on Silent Stalker and Branton! Maybe he sees badly, or maybe he just doesn't care, either way it's not Branton she attacks, but the newly Glabroed Ragabash, tearing a sizable chunk out of her shoulder as she goes down like a cheap prom date under the not quite Crinos, not quite Hispo freak.
Branton was not expecting that but nothing about this entire experience has been what was expected. Finding his footing Branton settles into a more reliable strike and parry motion. Now that he isn't scrambling to get things just so and focusing on the fight he does much better, at least until they start ganging up on him because of the threat his silver represnts. Then he just goes into full time parry work. Some strikes make it past his blade but none make it past his armor and parrying their unarmed strikes with silver? doesn't go well for them.
Red-Moon is in a frenzy, randomly attempting to chew through Branton and Silent-Stalker both, not recognizing friend from foe and going after anything that moves in his weird sight range. At one point, he even stops to claw himself across his chest. Branton is able to nickle and dime those two to death while backing around in circles, avoiding serious damage by the skin of his teeth. Iris has more trouble with her single foe though, there's no one helping her out with attacking it, and its attention is all on her. She takes an antler to the shoulder at one point but eventually manages to tear the galliard's throat out at about the same time Red-Moon falls to the ground, screaming an unnatural howling, clicking sound. Panting, still and alert for any more danger, it takes a minute before Iris comes limping over towards Branton, turning to aim the broken antler stuck in her shoulder at him and expressively whine. This hurts, take it out!
Branton will put the silver blade away carefully before he steps in to pull the stuck bit of broken antler from Iris as he tries to catch his breath "Well that's a thing that just happened."
The bodies of the slain pack do not shift to their breed forms as usually happens with dead shifters. Instead, the form they held on death remains, twisted and weird and nonsensical.
Iris whines again as the antler is pulled free and stumbles away for a moment, trying hard to visualize her own breed form. Her wound doesn't regenerate, and remains as she shifts back to homid again. "Ooooow FUCK." she complains, holding her shoulder, "I think I've got some bandages in my purse.." she says, inviting Branton to help her look. "Was that them? Goddess, what a mess.. I can't.. I don't even know how to feel about this, but.. Those poor things, tainted beyond belief. I'm not sure we had any chance except to do what we did."
Branton shakes his head at Iris as he looks in the purse for something that can be used as bandages even if the Realm has made existing supplies problematic "They didn't seem to be in a talking mood, honestly I'm not sure how much of their minds were left. The Garou they were died a long time ago, on a spirit quest to heal their pack mate."
Iris did once have actual bandages in her purse for emergencies with kinfolk, but now she has colorful silk cloth and pads of rough burlap. "Ugh." she complains when this turns out to be their supplies. She helps where she can, but lets Branton do the first aid work. "Yeah, it's true..." Iris agrees with a sad sigh and a look spared for the dead, "People worry a lot about Wyrm taint, it can warp and mutate you into terrible things. S'why fomori can sometimes look incredibly screwed up. This is taint too, though, extreme Wyld taint. Spending who knows how long here.. We should bury them. I don't think we should try and take their bodies out of here, they're.. I dunno, too much a part of the place. They could spread their taint in the ground and I'm not sure how you cleanse this sort of thing. Is it the same ritual? But we got the book still, right? We can take that out."
Branton nods at Iris and considers "Bury or burn, I can manage either. Want me to open a pit under them? We should probably finsh our business and take care of that right before we leave though. The book? yeah. I can push the wyld resonance out of it maybe, I....I'm not sure about them."
"Yeah, a pit would be good, especially since we don't have shovels." While Branton works that out, she gets up and works on dragging the pack mates closer together and stretching them out in a position that seems peaceful.
Branton helps with the stacking and marks out the circle and makes some runes to prep for the spell "Should I do this now or after we've done the harvesting? Not sure what's actually going to happen with this spell here. Things seem stable at the moment."
"Um... Good question. Okay, let's check the tree first just in case." Iris agrees, "I mean, when you fill it back up or whatever happens, we might accidentally make a mountain. Or flood the crater with sea water." But, they're prepared for burial, at least! And that's a good start. When the pair travels towards the tree, crossing the little stream with its schools of small birds below the surface...
The tree is a splendid thing more appropriate to the end of a fairy tale than to a real life adventure. Beautiful green and gold leaves flutter in a non existent breeze and its heavy with a sparkling fruit that is indeed shaped exactly like puffy cartoon hearts.
"Hey guys." says a male voice from somewhere within a large clump of shrubs close to the base of the tree.
Branton tilts his head at the sound of a voice and glances cautiously over at Iris and says back "Heyyyyy there." Because a talking tree would not be the weirdest thing that happened to him today.
Dramatic music plays as cast names fly across the screen!
When we last left our heroes, they had a rough battle with three crazy, warped and Wyld tainted Garou guarding a small hill where their target rests. Said target is a fantastical tree growing strange, heart shaped fruit. After getting the bodies ready for a burial, Iris and Branton agreed that this landscape is far too weird and unpredictable to delay getting their prize for the wounded spirit left behind on earth. If they take the time to bury the dead *first*, they might turn around and discover the hill had moved a thousand miles to the left. So instead, they just got things ready and will attend to that afterwards.
On approaching the tree on the hill, all vibrant gold and green leaves and sparkling puffy heart shaped fruits, they heard a male voice saying, "Hey guys." What the shit? Branton had replied back with "Heeeeeeeey there..." Because that's fucking weird, but after everything else they've seen... Not the weirdest deal breaker ever.
Part Three
Iris is looking around for the source of the voice, turning in circles, because the only thing in front of them was literally just a tree on a grassy hill, and a shrub near its base. "What the... What?" The male voice sounds again, "Down here. Look for the eyes or something. ...I guess." With a little bit of steering in the right direction, it's not actually the tree speaking, but the shrub at its base which... If you move around it a little bit, does indeed look kind of person shaped, like someone leaning against the trunk with their legs stretched out in front of them. Vaguely. It's quite a wild grown bush, but there *are* little flowers and berries dotted on it that, at a certain spot, look an awful lot like a.. a face.
Branton nods and considers as he looks at the face as his skin turns green to match the color of the leaves "Hey there. Grinds-the-Bones I assume? Or what's left of him?"
The bush doesn't move, but the leaves twitch and shiver just a touch as it answers, "Yes sir, that's me. Well. Was me, I suppose. I'm... Guessing that since you're here, that my pack mates are dead?" He seems like he expects the answer to be yes and already lets out a sigh. "Better late than never, I suppose... I hope they died well?"
Iris lets Branton handle the talking for the moment since the men(?) seem to have something of a rapport going on right now, and instead busies herself with paying attention and inspecting their things nearby, while making sure she's easy with her stabbed shoulder.
Branton nods at the bush "They made us work for it that's for certain and well...they're at peace now. I think the Garou they were ceased to be a long time ago. We found a journal on our way here, and have plans to carry it out when we go. So you all won't have just gone missing on a spirit quest."
At least that was Branton's understanding of the plan, he can't remember if it ever got said out loud
"That's good, that's good, I gotta admit, I've been worried about that." the bush replies, "It's hard not to think about people that might have been wondering where we're at. How long have we been here, anyhow? There's no way to tell time here, it's... Bizarrely frustrating and relaxing at the same time." Iris can't help herself, and blurts out, "Why are you sane?" at the bush, "Because the other three were definitely *not* in their right minds!" The bush's leaves shift in two spots, looking vaguely like a shrug. "I think I just wasn't angry enough to lose my mind. I remember most of the trip to this place, it was rough on everyone all around, and you know how Garou tempers can be. If I hadn't been so broken and depressed, I probably would have frenzied a few times as well. By the time we got here, Red Moon was broken and Silent Stalker was fast slipping down into madness. Runs on the Wind, she.. She held out as long as she could, but she was already losing it big time when they set me up against this tree here. Sad fact was, the whole trip was for nothing, and I think that was the straw that broke the Galliard's back. It's just fruit. Tastes great, but it didn't heal my spine and I never did walk again. All that hope getting crushed like that, they just.. didn't make it. I sat here for a while and contemplated death while they ran around like crazy chickens, losing their minds, their voices, their forms. Then I saw this amazing sunrise, and I watched a mountain being born from nothing and.. I don't know. Little by little, just watching this place, I lost my desire to die. They raged, and I just sat here and watched the world, so maybe that's why I can still think. I stayed calm. They didn't abandon me though, they might have changed but we were still family. They stayed here with me and guarded me while they slowly started looking more and more alien, made sure I had food and water. They didn't care when branches started growing out of my skin, they still loved me anyway in their weird, base animal ways."
Branton nods at the bush "About twenty years or so? On the outside anyway. It was Twenty eighteen when we left anyway. We're going to bury them before we go, after we've harvested the fruit we came for. Anything you want us to do for you before we go?"
"Hot damn, that's.. wow. It really has been a long time." Before answering the latter question, though, the bush asks a question of its own. "What do you need the fruit for, anyway?"
Branton chuckles at the question "So we came across these two groups of spirits fighting. Some weird Spider looking weaver things and some weird dryad looking plant ladies. The Dryads were losing and we managed to save one on account of the spiders proving to be a reasonable degree of flamable but there was problem. The Dryad had gotten wounded badly enough that what it used for a heart fell out broken. We tried to put it back and all the spirit was able to do was open a portal to here, so we came to get it a replacement."
"Mightly noble of you." the bush replies, pausing a moment in thought. "I don't know if the tree is going to help. Don't get me wrong, it's damned good fruit, chalked full of Gnosis, but it's just fruit. You should take one with you, just in case. But if I could uh.. Well, I don't know that I'll survive here on my own without my pack. I'm not sure I want to. I'm okay now, even if I am just a bush, but... Grinds-the-Bones died back in that building on earth when he got his spine snapped. Me, I'm just... It's borrowed time, sir. Just borrowed time. This is no way to live, I've found peace, and because of my pack I clawed my way out of Harano while they lost their minds, but I don't want to be here like this, alone and forgotten. I don't want to lose what's left of myself over looking their graves. I can't go home, I'm not who I was any more, hell I'm not even Garou any more. I'm no Theure, but ours once said that if you stray too long with the spirits, you become one. Take the fruit, but.. Take my heart as well. Give me an honorable death, and maybe a spirit's heart will help that poor creature you're trying to save. Will you do this for me?"
Branton nods at the bush "Sounds like a plan to me. In fact.....I've sort of got an idea. It wouldn't work if we were anywhere else probably." He glances between the bush and one of the heart-fruit hanging on the tree as he asks Iris "You know the rite of Binding right? if he's a spirit now it should work and that'll do for transport."
The bush makes a sound of quietly resigned relief when Branton agrees, and quietly awaits his death while his busy-face stares off into the distance and soaks up the last of his view of the Flux realm. Iris's expression is solemn and sad, but she offers no protest to the discussion at hand. She probably wouldn't hesitate to ask for death at a time line this either, if she faced an uncertain future alone and immobile. "Yes I do, what do you need me to do?" she asks Branton quietly.
Branton nods at Iris "If you harvest one of the hearts and bring it down here and we improvise a spirit healing talen made out of our new friend here. Using the fruit like the cooler full of dry ice to transport an organ for transplant. Ish. I can harvest the bush with my sword when its time for that. I think its name might be Tranquility. Maybe."
Listening, Iris begins to nod her head and smile at Branton, "That's brilliant, yes. Without the spirit, the heart would die, but the gnosis of the fruit would indeed act like dry ice to transplant an organ." Solemn moment or no, she bends to smooch Branton on top of the head for his quick thinking, and then works on climbing (carefully, due to her shoulder) up to get one of the fruits. While Branton is getting ready to cut the heart out of a bush, said bush helps a bit, its twigs and branches leaning and spreading so that there's an unobstructed path towards its, er.. chest. The humanoid features there are only barely visible or recognizable, for all intents and purposes the man has become a barky plant with a surprisingly thick central trunk, covered in much smaller branches. "I don't want you to feel bad about this, sir, you're doing me a kindness and I thank you for it. You make sure, if you get word of us back to our peoples, you make sure they know we were a pack to the very end. We lived and died together." There's an odd quality to the bush's voice, as though it were steadfastly refusing to tear up. Although, where it would tear up exactly isn't clear, given that it's a bush.
When Iris retrieves one of the large fruits, she comes back to dig in her purse for a little sage for ritual use, "I think that's a very nice name for a sword that brought merciful deaths. Do it quick so he won't suffer." she says quietly, ready to perform the rite as soon as the heart is available.
Branton draws the sword out again and nods as he lines up the cut "I'll do that Grinds-the-Bones-rhya. You give your life to save another, to preserve the wyld from the weaver's madness. It is a good and honorable end." And he cuts.
Iris herself tears up rather much herself at the end there, and sheds a few tears while watching as Branton makes the killing stab. The bush itself says nothing, there isn't time and maybe saying something would have ruined the moment, or weakened his resolve. There's a grunt of pain from it though, the whole bush twitching and shivering when Branton's sword plunges carefully into his chest, its bushy face pointed off towards where the sky has decided for a moment to be a sunrise. A moment later, the bush stills, its branches and twigs relax and there's nothing more from it.
A few careful cuts is all it takes to open Grinds-the-Bones chest, his bones are only as strong as wood now, and inside he is mostly plant sap and very little blood, his organs strange replicas of the real things. Pods and odd shaped wood growth, but his heart, it looks more like a stone, a rough hewn ruby that's never seen a jewel cutter, sparkling and wet with sap, and indeed very similar to the spirit's broken squishy ruby thing. As much as it looks like a stone, this one too is squishy and fleshy to the touch. Assuming Branton decides to touch the thing, that is; the once-Garou's insides don't look *nearly* as poisonous and strange as the dryad thingie's did. Meanwhile, iris chants quietly, holding the large fruit in her hand and moving it forward as soon as Branton's ready, bowing her sage and preparing for a mild battle of will to get it seated...
Branton will totally do Grinds-the-Bones that honor, sure its sticky and gross but he was a person once and this is how he chose to go out. When its time the spirt-heart is placed against the fruit-heart and they sort of...fold around eachother as Iris completes her rite.
Sticky and gross, yes, it's gonna take a buncha soap to get that off Branton's hand, and a lot of cleaning for his sword, but no one's growing tumors, so that's a plus! "Now to figure out how to get out of here. We need a... a hole. Any kind of hole. A knot in a tree, a mole hill, a space between boulders.. Anything. I'm not real sure how to pick the *right* gateway out of here, I think we're stuck with guessing." she says while carefully folding the infused fruit up in the remainder of her bandages and setting it carefully in her purse.
Branton nods at Iris and gestures back over at the funeral spot "I feel like we should move him over to join his pack and then bury them all. And I can try a spell for an exit unless you've got a gift that'll do?"
For escaping a realm that's half a prison thanks to the Weaver? I got nothin." But Iris nods at the suggestion and kneels down to scratch around under the bush. "He's got roots!" she notes. But the green of the bush is fading, its leaves slowly but steadily drooping as death works its magic even here. "They're not very deep though." Between the two of them, if they dig a bit and pull here and there, they can uproot the once-Garou and carry him.
Branton nods as they set him on the pile "Seemed the right thing to do, they should rest together like they lived together. A pack to the end." Then once they get him set on the pile and step well back Branton will speak the spell to open the earth beneath the funeral circle he marked out. The ground shakes and there's a grinding noise of stone on stone as the bodies of varying descriptions are commended to the earth. When he finishes there's a slab of cracked stone buried in the grass like its been there for years. The faintest outline of the pack's glyph barely visible.
While Branton works his spell and commits the warped bodies to the ground, Iris lifts her head to issue a long, mournful howl. When the burial is finished, the Wyld itself has something to say for the dead. Around the edges of the slap, beautiful trees begin to rapidly grow, branches spreading and roots growing in and over the ground, each of them wrapping over a piece of the slab as if to lock it into place and ensure it will never be lifted. The trees themselves take on fantastical shapes, clearly *just* trees, but with a trunk form that speaks of identifiable forms. A wolf and three humans, one male and two female. Their upper most branches reach out, touching each other in a circle over the slab. The air within the circle shimmers and warbles, showing a hazy view of a southern california forest. "I'll be damned." Iris says while looking upwards. "I'm pretty sure that's our home." Now they just have to get up there! Fortunately, they can both fly.
Branton nods at Iris and powers up his boots, lifting into the air "Lets make our delivery. Lingering here too long doesn't seem like a good idea."
"Agreed!" Iris says, clutching her purse protectively for the previous cargo inside and sprouting little wings from her ankles. Flying just fifteen feet up is easy enough, gravity still likes to pull funny and it's not quite as easy as just going straight to the portal. The hazy image begins to fade and for a moment it seems like the buffeting of the Wyld's fuck-you to physics will make them miss their chance, but just at the last second the Fury pair reach the portal and slip through. It's like moving through cold, clear water, chilly enough to raise goosebumps and with a hint of pulling current.
The pair actually emerge out of a small pool of water in the forest, and none too distant they can hear the sounds of battle in a familiar forest. Branton's voice comes from somewhere in the trees and there's a woosh of flame sound quickly followed by the scream of something metallic.
Branton looks over at Iris and blinks a couple of times at her and mouths 'da fuq?' seeming more than a little baffled.
Iris gives Branton a confused shrug and with a 'come on!' gesture, she begins carefully moving through the brush. They quickly get to a place where they can see what's happening and watch... themselves, but from the past. Branton and Iris are cutting through the webbing that's binding up a four armed plant thingie, speaking to each other and to it as they find out what's going on and what they can do. "Time is fluid, that's for *damned* sure." Iris says, watching with amazement, looking around and seeing all the hallmarks of 'this is definitely real and we're definitely on earth'. Birds, bugs, trees, and everything else that's normal. Umbraly speaking, that is. The spirit is just now placing her hand on the ground and opening the rift, Iris is commanding owl spirits to stand guard over the spirit and keep the spiders at bay as she and Branton hold hands, count to three, and jump. If for any reason during this the Branton she just returned with looks like he might want to interfere in any way, she'll stop him with a hand and a quiet word, "We interrupt, and everything will change. We have to let it happen the way it happened." A few seconds after Past Iris and Branton jump, pattern spiders stitch the rift closed.
Branton nods at Iris and whispers back "I've read enough sci-fi to know that jumping in now is a terrible idea." as he watches himself disappear into the portal.
"They cover this stuff in sci-fi?" Iris asks, not having read a ton of books herself. Once their past selves are gone and probably coming to their feet on a floating island over a chaos landscape, Iris takes Branton's hand and tugs as she moves out of the bushes and trots quickly towards the dying spirit. The four armed sorta-woman is beginning to turn from a golden brown bark color to something more ashy, eyes half closed as she lies there on the forest floor, surrounded over head by guardian owls with her chest torn open and her broken heart slowly puddling and evaporating. As soon as they get close, Iris begins digging out the transplant, unwrapping the fruit and handing it to Branton.
Branton takes the talen heart and sets it in the cavity where it belongs and concentrates, pressing his magic against it to activate it and it starts to glow some. Pulsing faintly at first.
Branton, the human defibrillator! The settled transplant does nothing at all inside the chest cavity until Branton activates it, but once he does, it begins growing tendrils outward, connecting itself to the spirit's insides. The heart shaped fruit begins to dissolve and absorb into her while the fleshy/ruby heart begins to beat a strange rhythm. Color begins to flood back into her 'skin', the ashy quality fading a health reclaims her. Even her chest wound begins to knit itself back together slowly but surely, stopping the stunted flow of sparkling sap-blood. It takes several hopeful minutes, but eventually she's sitting up, strange eyes focusing on the Fury pair. She smiles and bares sharp, primal teeth before cautiously standing, using her four arms to help herself. Iris lends a hand as well, and the spirit hesitantly accepts the help.
Branton will offer a helping hand but back off at the first sign reluctance. He watches though to make sure the spirit is alright, glancing briefly to Iris "We good to go then?"
"Heart." the spirit says, touching her chest with a feral smile at the pair, expressing thanks in her primeval way. She sniffs at Iris then and seems satisfied, then reaches out two of her arms to brush Branton's cheek and scalp. As she pulls away, WHOOSH! The spirit is gone in a flash of light and a wild gust of wind, leaving only leaves falling lazily to the ground. Iris stoops to pick those up, in case the spirit's leavings will prove useful for ritual work. "Um.. Yeah, yeah I think so. Holy *fuck* that was wild! ...Hell of a lesson on the Wyld though, huh? Didja learn anything?"
Branton laughs at Iris when the spirit goes woosh "Well just because we might like the wyld better than the other branches of the Triat that doesn't mean its any more Balanced or safe to be around."
Iris grins at Branton and says, "That's a very good answer!" She digs her phone out of her purse and sends off a text, saying, "I'm sending Journey a message, I want to get us checked out by a senior Theurge. Just in case. Ow *fuck* my shoulder hurts." Yep, still got a hole clean through it from the Galliard's antler. "Let's head back to the pack home, we'll see if we can get Brooke around, tell her what happened and see if she can find out where that journal needs to go, maybe?"
