Grecco [Michael]

When next Michael Lennox enters the Caern via the stairs down from St. Michael's Church, the guardian stationed in the stairwell tells him that Linnea Bartlett ("'lil Bartlette" or "Wyrmfoe" or "Linnea" or "That Fang kid" or even "Vanguard of the Dawn" - depending on who, precisely, has pulled that duty on that day) was asking after him, and that she's off duty, probably somewhere in the guardian quarters beneath the church, above the catacombs. Eventually, the Shadow Lord finds the Silver Fang in her narrow, dormitory-style room. Before the Battle for the Caern of Echoes, the guardians doubtlessly doubled up in the limited space below the church, but that is no longer the case.

Some guardians decorate their space with photographs, drawings, glyphs, treasures, tribal or otherwise. Linnea's small space is bare and plain: a narrow bed, neatly made with almost hospital-corner precision, a footlocker, a chair, a bedside table with a reading light, and five or six books in a neat stack on the floor. The pale-haired girl is stretched out on her bed on her stomach, propped up at the elbows, pouring over a book while chewing on the tail of her braid.

Michael knocks; Linnea mumbles an absent "mmmph, come in?" and doesn't look up until the door opens. When she sees him, the girl flashes a quick, friendly smile. "Oh - hi! Uhm, we have a few things - " - she stretches through the spine, like a cat, and cranes her head to see around him, out into the hall. " - to, hey - you wanna go to the battlefield? To talk?"

Michael: Michael, once the door is open, has taken up residence leaning against the doorjamb apparently absent of any damage occurring to the hand-crafted suit he wears. He is very much the quintessential power-broker, but oddly enough his manner is more humble than one might expect.

Dark brown eyes studying the Wyrmfoe attentively and she gets the very real feeling that he is peering much deeper than merely at her skin. Her question posed, it is a couple seconds before he responds with the rising of his brow.

"Battlefield? A novel area to have a conversation when one can be had here, but you have set the terms. Shall we?"


"Mmmm." She does not flinch under his scrutiny, but she does remember herself - self-consciously, and otherwise. Small physical signals of that animal awareness make themselves clear: her respiration rate changes, each breath regular, but more shallow than when she is wholly in repose. Faint spots of color bloom in her pale, befreckled cheeks. Her pulse quickens, and the hairs on the back of her neck prick to attention. At the same time, her shoulders and spine straighten, unconscious pride. Abruptly, the girl lets go of the tail of her braid, plants her hands on the bed, and pushes herself up, twisting her skinny torso and hips around until she is sitting, Indian-style, on the now disordered white blanket. Nervous, self-conscious around a virtual stranger, spiking and sparking with energy, subdued thanks to the sliver of a moon. "I like it there?" The upward lilt of her tone is almost universal to teenager girls, turning a statement into half-a-question. "It helps me think?"

That half-question, too, hangs in the air, before the girl dispels it with the sort of half-smile that comes to her easily. "But here is fine, too. Better - " a quick little grin, " - since you're here and I am too and - oh!" She covers her mouth with her hand, tosses a glance at the chair. "I'm sorry, I forgot my manners. Do you want to sit down?"

Michael: In a tribe known for doing whatever it takes damned be the consequences
and focused so much on the concept of dominance, it is some surprise to
find Lennox exempllifying the concept of servant leadership. Perhaps
subtle is a better word. Understated.

Whatever it is called, the conflict between a humbled personality and
the way one can see decisions and judgement fleeing from those critical
eyes is confounding. To complicate matters, he is a highly critical
fellow whose warmth has been bled from him unless he focuses on that.

At her offer, his brows knit together. Here tucked in the quarters of
the Guardians with the Wyrmfoe who happens to belong to the Fangs. The
complexities continue from there, but are wholly unnecessary to
consider in full.

Rather, he offers her one of those rare smiles that can cause the most
stoically resigned to blossom. "To the Battlefield then Linnea." He
steps fully into the room and even closer to her. "Shall we step
together?"

"Yeah," Linnea responds, an answering grin curving her mouth, " - lemme get my shoes - " The girl shifts to her knees and then uncurls her legs from beneath her,so that she is sitting with her legs swinging over the side of her bed. She noses about beneath her bed with her right toe until she has managed to snag the tongue of her right hiking boot, kicks it into the air and catches it, and then repeats the same elaborate, unncessary game to retrieve the left boot. "I like to - " she takes in a breath, poised, concentrating on reaching for the boot - it would be much easier it she would simply bend down and grab it, "I like to watch it. From above?" Still futzing about with her shoes, the girl shoots a pale, lashed glance upward. "I - I try to see what Runs-with-Dragons-rhya saw - how he knew to call the retreat in time to save the Caern. How - how Blood-Eclipse-rhya - how he held the line so - so that it wasn't a rout." The boots are cramped and too small, much as her jeans are now too short: Linnea has gained an inch and a half in height since her rite of passage and nearly two and a half inches since her first change. She makes short work of them, however, shoving each foot into its respective boot and quickly tying off the laces in a neat double knot. "I mean, I can see it. I look for it and I see it - and it helps me think."

Hands planted on either side of her hips to lever her upward, the young Silver Fang stands, stomping her feet into place in her boots and arching her spine in a bone-popping stretch. She glances around the room, snags a sleek black cell phone from her bedside table, slipping it into her right hip pocket, then turns and smooths her blanket into good, straight order. She pauses long enough to survey her handiwork, then joins Michael at the foot of the narrow bed, pale eyes flickering around the barren room before finding his. "Ready - "

[Michael Lennox] Michael looks to Linnea with an amused expression. Nodding once. "I am ready." Side stepping, he steps into the umbra


[Linnea Bartlett] With a faint grimace, Linnea slides her cell phone back out of her pocket and returns it to her bedside table. The new device won't make the trip between the worlds. The Gauntlet is thinner here than anywhere in the city, but nonetheless, she makes use of her own reflection in the polished metal base of her bedside lamp, focuses on her own eyes staring back at her, and pushes through the barrier between worlds, stepping across into the Umbra.

[Michael] Once into the Umbra, Michael shifts down to the wolf. A sleek beast of the purest blackwith a massive chest. Clearly built for endurance, even if his is a judge compared to the mighty warrior next to him. Using various expressions from stomping of a foot to nuzzling Linnea at the hip passes along the meaning that she is to lead the way

[Linnea Bartlett] The tall girl flashes a glance down at Michael, pale lashes shadowing her pale eyes. Then she, too, changes. Her skinny body pops, her skin stretches painfully as joints rearrange themselves again and again - from two feet to two feet to four feet to four, until she, too, has taken the last, the simplest, the most feral form available to them. Like her Crinos, she is white-and-silver, with a thick silver ruff and clear blue eyes. Her mind is focused, now, intent, contracted to that which is immediately in front and around and ahead of her. She takes off like a bullet, running because she was meant to run, following the spiritual reflections of the winding tunnels of the underbawn, running (because she was meant to run) through the narrow, twisting corridors, past the Caern's heart, until at last she comes to the battlefield-become-graveyard, eerie in any world.

There, the wolf becomes a hispo becomes crinos becomes glabro becomes girl once more. Certainly girl is the least impressive of the young Silver Fang's forms, without the obvious strength, grace or power she exudes in any of her more feral forms. She stands at the edge of the ledge overlooking the battlefield, and lowers herself to sit with her feet dangling over the 20 foot drop to the ground below.

[Michael] The "short" excursion was uneventful. But throughout, Michael flanked to her left searching for any would-be trouble. Dutiful to protect the trueborn would-be leader if she ever proved herself worth his true respect. Otherwise, time would tell....

Once there, he back...

"Alright...so we're here in the Battlefield....with relative privacy." said even as he turns looking around knowing he could guarantee that with time and the need.

[Linnea Bartlett] Linnea scoots back from the ledge, far enough to plant her right foot on the ground, slings her arms loosely around her bent knee and rests her chin at the apex. She glances up at him again, the corner of her mouth twitching upward in a strange cousin to her usual friendly smile.

She's nervous. She takes two breaths before she begins, but at least when she begins she does not stutter, or fall into her usual spiraling word-thought-rage traps, where the words she wants to say get bottled up in her throat, inadequate to the task before her. "Grecco." Her hand flexes against the fabric of her jeans. "He's yours. To kill or rescue or - " she stops, briefly, takes in another breath. "But we do this together. Do you have any information you have not shared with me yet?"

[Michael] He shakes his head. His expression never really changing much. Simply just accepting what she says.

"I am going down some leads, but there is nothing much to pass on. I have taken to trying to track down some of his less noteworthy contacts among the stalkers of the night.....trying not to break the veil has been difficult, but overall has been fruitless."

He studies her once again allowing his words to take hold even as the fullness of his mere presence does as well. Hardly the in-born (inbred) leader that she could become like that of Judgement. Perhaps in these more innocent times its clear why he has access to every caern in the land.

[Linnea Bartlett] "Swallows-the-Sun has gone to speak with another Uktena who has some information regarding Grecco." Linnea stops, then restarts. There is no reason to believe that the Uktena is still alive. "Had some information regarding Grecco, according to the notes Speaks-in-Ancient-Tongues-rhya left behind. I - I don't want you to pursue the city's leeches until and unless it becomes necessary. Stormwarden-rhya thought, at some point, that he had them under control, didn't he?" The girl watches the Shadow Lord closely, in the dark shadows of the underbawn. Now and then, however, she looks off - out over the battlefield, the frozen shapes of their fellows. Her mouth sets and she glances back to him. "There is something else for you to do. Speaks-in-Ancient-Tongues-rhya was tracing Grecco's family tree. She believed that there may have been some ... connection between his family, his ancestors, and leeches in the Balkans." The girl shrugs. "I don't know if there is anything to this, but - but - it's worth following. Continue her research, find what she couldn't find."

[Michael] His expression changes only to allow his brow to knit together at some unspoken question. Respect is given to the Silver Fang, but clearly he would demand it in return. Gone were the days that a lord would bend his knee just because some line ran pure for century upon century.

"Vanguard of the Dawn, whether we like or not, we must see what happened to the connections existing between the Sept and the leeches. We can hardly afford open war, and my tribe has dealt with them in the past with some measure of success. I must make a stand. I will continue seeking to make inroads with the vampires though I will of course use my pack to defend myself."

His hands clasped before him and while his expression remains mild, composed and even willing to accept her leadership, his words spoken with a similar softness carry considerable weight.

"I have already planned a trip to Wallachia and can easily travel to the Balkans to track further clues down. Do you accept these acts of service?"

[Linnea Bartlett] "We can't afford open war; nor can we afford another battle such as this." She unhooks her knee and kicks out her foot so that it swings over the void where so many died. "We have lost the prides of our tribes." She shoots him a sidelong glance, appraising, and in that look is the shadow of a greater past, the presence of her ancestors, whose bones litter the floor beneath the battlefield. Their authority, perhaps - at least their wisdom, channeled through the half-grown child's body in improbable fits and spurts. "Do not follow in Grecco's footsteps, whereever they led him." Her mouth twitches, quirking up at the corner. "I need you here."

Her hands are on her thighs, and she pushes herself to stand. "I accept these acts of service. Return to me with whatever you find, and we will continue." The girl's mouth twitches, then opens into a quick grin. "I think - I think that's all."

[Michael] Michael nods and stepping back makes his way to more private areas.