Jan Moot: Calling of the Wyld [Several]

[Samuel Cutler]

There’s no warning, only the Garou who speaks to end one phase of the moot quieting himself. A split second later, and Samuel’s homid voice roars with enough force that you might expect the smell of blood to come with the raw sound.

“For the spirits!” He holds the scream until his lungs are empty and burning like a drowning man’s. “Part! I call for the spirits, but cannot do it alone!” As Garou part ways, he throws a rucksack with the sound of clattering glass and sloshing liquid into the black sand circle at the center of the assemble stadium.

As Garou move to allow him a proper path to the circle a mass of shifting flesh replaces Samuel as he becomes the Crinos form that is truest for times like these. Racing across raised stone railing, row after row of medieval stadium-seating, he finally jumps and hits sand, sending a storm of it to hit against the sides of the circle. Perhaps it hits the Garou standing above, but he doesn’t care. Perhaps it would anger then, but that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“Cockroach. Rat. Uktena. Fenris. Grandfather Thunder. Stag. Pegasus. Falcon. Names. These are only names.” He tears open the rucksack with savage claws, the sound of more cracking and breaking class coming from within as he does so. The cups he brings forth are cracked, chipped, and otherwise destroyed. Broken glass where they would menace lips, broken glass inside where they would tear at the stomach, and broken glass surrounding them. As he speaks his arranges them and fills them with a brown liquid from withing a waterskin, giving no care for the nicks and cuts that cover his taloned fingers as he does so.

It would put the smell of blood on the air, and that would be a good thing. Let them inhale what they would have to work for. Let it wet their appetites.

“Bear. Only a name. The Caern of Echoes. Only a name, one made by us. Luna, but a name. Gaia, but a name. But names have power. So much more than just a name. These are our protectors and our protected. These are our totems. Our mothers and fathers in both spirit and flesh.”

Finished, he turns his attention to the Sept he’d only been talking to as he prepared the glasses. One and a quarter score, they stand close and nestled in the black sand.

“Earn your spirits! Pay for them in blood and bruises, pain and suffering! I will bond you to them, if you will fight for them! FIGHT FOR THEM!” He walks a few paces from where the drinks are, and then begins in a circle, eyes still cast downward as he does so. He stops before Judgement’s Teeth, and then raises his eyes toward the Silver Fang Grand Elder. The eyes are ringed in bloody whites, bloodshot and fevered, near to the point of tears in the passion he expresses in them. “You, too.” Then, he bares his teeth at the Adren and waits.

Suicidal? Perhaps, but Garou have given their lives for lesser causes than uniting a Sept that had almost fallen to the Wyrm with their totems.

Judgement’s Teeth steps down into the circle as gracefully as could be expected from any of such royalty, his walk toward the glasses undeterred for a moment before Samuel charges him, butcher’s blade left behind, on four limbs. Hoping to aim a mouthful of snapping fangs at the Silver Fang’s leg, the Philodox’s hands close on his throat and uses The Butcher’s momentum against him. It sends him through the air and crashing into the stone wall that makes up the perimeter of the circle. Coughing in pain and holding his side, blood drools down the corners of his muzzle and he pulls himself onto his feet just in time for the Philodox to cross the circle in the sand and grab the largest cup.

“To Falcon, Bear, Luna, and the mother Gaia,” the Grand Elder says before downing the liquid, the container He drops the cup back into the sand and returns to his seat beside the Warder and Keeper of the Land.

The Warder’s journey to his cup goes just as easily for him and painfully for Samuel, as does the spirit-aided one traveled by the Shadow Lord Keeper of the Land. These ringers done with, Samuel turns toward the other Cliath and dares them forward with bared fangs and flexed talons. “Come, Sept of Echoes. Gain your drink, and gain your spirits!”

[Linnea]

Vanguard of the Dawn takes the challenge; she is neither the first to charge the Godi, nor the last, although they are perhaps the best matched opponents in terms of strength, speed and skill. Confused at the beginning by the form of the ceremony – new to her – she takes her cue from her elder and from the wild surge of adrenaline spiking through her beating heart, her response to the Godi’s exhortations. Blind and instinctual, feverish, she surges from teenager to monster with the rest, and plunges over the wall into the sandpit. The Crinos lands easily on all fours, compellingly graceful, and kicks up a sandstorm as she charges the Caller of the Wyld at the center of the circle. The crunch of their impact is tooth-grindingly, bone-jarringly loud, and the wrestling match that ensues kicks up such a cloud of grit that the two Garou at the center of it seem to be a sepia toned projection, running at two times the normal speed. One gains the upper hand, and then the other, neither failing, until Vanguard of the Dawn at last pins the Butcher and holds him against the sand (one might feel the beating of Falcon’s wings), seizes a near-shattered glass and drains the contents at one go.

It's only moments after the Wyrmfoe has taken her drink, Samuel split wide with scrapes and rapidly healing cuts, the gash of his bushy mawed grin delivered towards the masses once more, when the seeking shadow suddenly barrels forwards. It's like a streak of mottled fur, facing off against ancestral force and the blood of Heroes. A David and Goliath moment, as the tiny Lupus darts forwards, snaking in and among the Crinos legs of the only split-second attentive Caller of the Wyld.

[Ben]

A Ragabash knows no Honour unless he wishes it.

A No-Moon has no restrictions, unless he seeks them.

A Rotagar knows only the paths of the Ruthless and Efficient.

Right after the Wyrmfoe, Samuel would be weakened, beaten and healing only the smallest amounts. Seconds, or the moments between seconds, where flesh has sealed only an inch of each cut. It's when the perfect strike comes, when he lunges forwards in and among the steadily rising Wyld Caller, tangling amidst his legs as the pain begins to subside and the flesh begins to re-grow, snapping lupus jaws against the tufts of fur and flesh that make up calves and thigh and ankle.

It's only when the Rotagar has leapt to the very edge of Samuel's perimeter that the sheer speed, destructive and Chaotic, suddenly leaps to the Godi's fingertips, a hand reaching outwards faster then most eyes could follow, respectable by any Ahroun's standards, to take hold of the bushy tail of the No-moon, an awkward squawk of surprise tearing free of his jaws, even as he digs claws into the ground to pull forward.

A brief tug-o'-war ensues, moments in time, The Butcher's claws raking along the tail, coming away with thick tufts of fur and a vicious grin at the Trophy earned, even as Ben lunges onto the table top, whining sharply (irritated) at his stripped tail, before the muzzle dives into one of the glasses to lap the contents bare.