the wyrm's mask part 1

Silence.

Deep, dark silence.

Apart from the sound of a whimpering baby pressed against her chest, that was all the tired, broken Garou could hear. Blissful silence as she laid in her own blood on the back porch of her husband’s current haven. She stared at the sky with blurry, tired, glazed eyes, clutching that child with every last ounce of muscle she had. The full moon began to shadow over and turn to a rusty red, darkening the sky with an eclipse.

Maybe it was symbolism, she thought. The night of her first change was marked by a lunar eclipse, though it barely had anything to do with her auspice. She lay there dying, even under the sheer power and healing factor of the Crinos form, as the Earth’s shadow passed over the moon. Alone, sad, and hurting, she lay there helpless and afraid, until it petered out and she fell into blissful unconsciousness.

So too, might the lunar eclipse mark the end of her life.

She knew she had brought this child to a good place. Jackdaw would find him sooner rather than later, get him fed and cleaned up, and love him like a father would. She knew he would find some way to get him cared for in the daytime. She knew, if she brought him here, he would make it happen. He had to. He would. She had to trust in him.

Her sister would be anguished, her best friends would be wounded. Her packmates, if you could call them that when she had never quite come to trust them, would mourn her death. But the thought of passing on brought her peace all the same. No more hurting, no more pain. No more being a burden to everybody she loved. She had died fighting the Black Spiral Dancers, and that was the only way she would ever see honor as a ghoul. At least, so she had been conditioned to believe from her experience of being run out of a city.

And someday, her soul would cycle back to the world, to fight again another day. Maybe one day, she would get to see them all again. If she saw their faces, would she remember? If she looked into Anya’s eyes, felt Roscoe’s practiced touch mend a wound, heard Zerah’s skilled guitar playing, smelled Jackdaw’s cologne again, would it all come flooding back?

In truth, that was all she wanted. To see them, and see them free from the burden that she had been.

Her vision grew slowly darker. Even the baby beginning to cry sounded so distant now. She could feel her muscles starting to spasm as her nervous system relinquished control to all the damage done. She knew in her heart that she didn’t have long left. She would soon be atop that morgue table, to be pulled apart and dissected by the mentor who had taken her under her wing when she first came to Seattle.

As she lay there, she wondered if everybody knew how much she loved them. She wondered if Anya knew just how much she really did appreciate that she was happy like she was. Did Roscoe know how much she owed him for keeping her alive this long, both through healing and through his having kept an eye on her? Did Reva know that she didn’t think of her as a load at all, that she had saved her life?

Did Jason know that she didn’t resent him for what happened that night he came home? Did Zerah understand just how important he was to her? And what about Aidan? Would he know just how much of a grounding point he was to her during her time with that pack, as one of the only ones she could trust? What about Jake? And Valentina? Would she understand what had happened?

What about Jackdaw? Would he know just how loved he really was? Did he know that sometimes her love for him was the only thing keeping her going? That when she thought about him, her heart hurt because she just couldn’t express the boundless emotions that he filled it with?

A part of her thought it was funny that the last thing, the very last troubles in her mind, were how much she loved the people who had been a part of her life. Ironic, for how she was dying cold and alone on somebody’s porch.

Somewhere, far in the distance, as the last thing in her vision became the hazy red moon, she heard a door click open.

~*~

When next she woke up, she was lying in the middle of a vast green forest, in a patch of tall grass. Her body ached as much as she figured it would, but above that, she was surprised she had woken up at all. Looking down at herself, her body was covered not by the tattered rags she had left the battle with, but with a soft, well-treated violet tunic, belted around the waist, embroidered with bright orchid patterns of dancing spirits and coiling dragons. Just under that, a red skirt, just like her favorite and fit just as well.

Stuck in the dirt nearby her was an ornate rapier, whose blade glimmered in the soft moonlight that filtered through the trees. The band of the hilt was polished with gold filigree, and around it was tied a banner of heraldry.

A backing of sable with pale of azure parted per chevron of argent, and again divided halfway down the banner per raguly of vert. Below that, a field divided per pale and per fess of argent and azure, two red dragons sejant rampant supporting. In each quarter, a charge; a lily chief dexter, and a cypress chief sinister. A bat base dexter, and a fox base sinister. At base, a panther, carrying in her mouth a banner with a printed motto upon it. It was in a language that she could not read, however, and so she didn’t ponder over it too much.

She lay there for a few moments more, allowing the dull ache around her body to fade, before standing up and pulling the foil from the ground. It felt strange to take into her hands, as if it were made for her, and solely for her. She felt a weight around the belt of her tunic, and looked to see a scabbard clipped to it as if it had always been there. How strange, she thought. But if she were still alive, it had aught to be a bit strange, hadn’t it?

Looking around saw her surrounded by brush too thick to allow her to go in any other direction but further into the clearing. In front of her, tremendous mushrooms and stumps from trees much too large to be local to where she lived.

Or at least, where she thought she lived.

Things were very hazy right now. Very hazy, indeed. She came from Seattle, right? And this was definitely not there. Or... was it? For some reason, it wasn’t quite coming to her. She remembered who she was, for sure. She was Zora Blackwood-Hayward, who loved gardening and video games and music, a devoted sister and friend and a loving wife. But to whom? Other parts of her memory were fuzzy and indistinct. She knew they existed, but she couldn’t seem to bring to mind their faces. She was, however, left with a strong and clear feeling that she had left a lot of people behind, wherever she was.

From somewhere further on, she thought she heard the plinking of an amateur guitar player, who was just getting used to the strings. Something about that sound tugged at her mind. She barely remembered teaching somebody just that. Not very long ago, either. In any case, that tug urged her to follow the sound deeper into the forest.

This definitely wasn’t the city anymore, she thought to herself. She couldn’t even hear the rush of cars in the distance. No, there was only her, the rustling of countless trees in the wind, and the sound of plinking in the distance, growing steadily closer as she walked onward, climbed up and over the brush and the stumps. It bothered her in a way she couldn’t quite describe, hearing the sounds of somebody not even trying to play her favored instrument.

Soon enough though, the source of the plinking became clear.

Sitting on a much smaller stump than those before it, in front of a fallen, hollow log embedded into the side of a cliff, was a small child, not much older than perhaps fourteen, in a puffy-looking turtleneck sweater. They had messy-looking brown hair, but most other details of their face were obscured by the strange mask they wore. It was a jet-black mask that resembled a viper, glimmering with a sheen that looked almost oily and greasy, with glowing, toxic green eyes that deeply unsettled her to look at. At their side floated two strange-looking spirits, that resembled tiny dragons that radiated poison.

“Tee hee. You two did great. She sure did have nice stuff on her.”

“That’s a pretty guitar. So… so pretty.” One of the two spirits commented. “Let me touch it! I want to play it! It’s- safe! Safe… safe.”

“You can’t, Harry!” The second one snapped, “What if you broke a string? How will we fix that?”

“It will… protect us. Protect...”

The child ignored the two, and plinked at a candy-red electric guitar, delicately painted with the sigil of a crimson gear on the side. When she laid eyes on it, a pang of recognition shot through her mind.

“Hey! Give that back!” She blurted out without really thinking.

“...Hee-hee-hee.” The voice that emerged from the child was strange, almost unnatural. It felt unreal, as if this wasn’t their true voice at all, but someone merely speaking over them. “What’s the matter? I only wanted to have a little fun with you.”

“This isn’t fun. Give it back!”

“And what’s with that stupid pet of yours, anyway?” It didn’t even sound like the child was listening. “I tried to ride it, but it won’t listen to a word I say. So I did you a favor, and got rid of it for you! You can thank me later!”

Now that they mentioned it, she felt something of a hollow feeling in the pit of her soul, like something was missing. Something essential to her very being. But before she could react further, the child and the two tiny dragons shot off into the hollowed out log and were soon out of sight, leaving her to stand there, bewildered.

“That was… my guitar...” She mumbled quietly to herself. “Somebody bought it for me… somebody… I know it’s special. And… and I know I need it back. Augh, why can’t I remember… it’s there, I know it’s there, but it won’t come to mind… fuck. I have to get it back. I’ll fight the little brat...”

After shaking her head out a little, she gripped the rapier she had found and pursued the child and their companions into the hollowed out log. To her surprise, it led into a strange, bramble-filled cave. Motes of light hung in the air and danced in front of her eyes and around her head and made her feel hazy and unreal. It felt like she knew what this was, but she couldn’t remember. Before her was a yawning hole in the ground that led into pitch blackness, and somehow she knew it was a bad idea to jump, but at the same time she also knew that that’s the only place the little creep could have gone.

With a deep breath, she jumped into the gaping void.

It felt like she was falling for entire minutes, though she had expected to splatter on the ground after the first few seconds. And surprisingly to her, when she finally did land, she was totally intact, inside a thorn-filled wooden hollow, covered in soft grass and dotted with strange fruiting plants, the likes of which she knew she had never seen.

And standing before a large painted door, was none other than the child again, who giggled unsettlingly upon resting their mask’s horrible snake eyes on her. This time, the feeling was more than just disturbed, rattled feeling in the pit of her gut. Now, it felt like her body was actually physically reviled.

In fact, it felt rather like her form was twisting and changing shape. Flashes in front of her vision depicted a great and terrible twisting monolith of a woman made of fur and of knives shaping her carefully into the form of a small fox. She felt the sting of skin being removed, over, and over, and over, and it felt like too, too many years in the span of what must only have been a few seconds.

Once her vision cleared again, she was left on her knees, clutching at her chest. She felt so much smaller than she knew she really was, and the laughter of the strange child rang bigger in her ears than she knew it should have. In fact, everything did. She felt herself over, and came away with soft, supple cream colored fur and a long, elegant tail. The rapier she had been clutching had become no more than a stick, though the banner tied to it remained the same as it had been.

“That’s a good look for you!” The child laughed, chidingly. “Ha! Now you’ll stay here looking that way forever!”

As she stood there stunned, one of the two tiny dragons launched themselves at her face and began tearing at her long ears, and she tried to pry it off. As the two struggled, the child and the other creature drifted through the painted door and were gone. The tiny biter seemed only to snap to attention as the door slammed shut again, and it squeaked in surprise and anger.

“Ariel! Wait!! Wait for me!! Harry, don’t leave without me!!” The little thing turned its head slowly toward that who she was assailing, growling and locking eyes with her. “You… if I weren’t busy dealing with you, my brother wouldn’t be out there all alone would he? It’s your fault! You could have left well enough alone, but you didn’t!”

“You stole my guitar!”

“Shut up! Shut up and do something about this, Changeling girl! Go! Why are you glaring at me like that! I don’t have anything on my face, do I?! Move it!”

“Why should I? You stole my guitar, turned me into this, and attacked me!”

“Because- because! Please… my brother won’t be able to last out there on his own. He has so many problems… I need to get back to him.”

“Should have thought of that before you assaulted me.”

“I’m sorry! I- I’m sorry… Ever since Ariel found that mask, being nearby them has just… made me angry. I want to attack people, and hurt things- now’s not the time! Please! I need to follow them!”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You want to know more about Ariel, right? It just so happens I have an idea where they might be headed. If we follow, maybe you can get your guitar back. Take me with you, and I’ll try to help as best I can. Alright? Deal?”

Zora stared the tiny dragon in the eyes a bit longer, then frowned loudly. “...Deal. But only because I want to find out what’s going on and get my guitar and my body back.”

“Good, great! Excellent! We’re partners then! At least, until we catch them...”

“I guess so, huh. You sure you aren’t going to try to maul me again?”

“I’m not! I… er… listen. My name’s Verity.”

“Zora. Nice to meet you. I guess. First thing’s first, can you tell me what the hell happened to me? I feel all… wrong. I’m all powerless and I have wimpy noodle arms.”

“Truth be told… I don’t know. I’ve never seen them do that before, turn somebody into a Changeling...”

“...Welp, that’s great. Magical, really. So, no idea how to reverse this?”

“Not at all… I’m sure we can find something. But we really need to stop faffing around! Harry is out there, alone...”

“Yeah, yeah… Let’s see here...”

Hefting the door out of the way certainly wouldn’t have been such a task if she had been in her normal body. But as such a small, lithe, unfit thing, it was more herculean than it had ought to have been. By the time she managed to open it, she was panting and wheezing, and she knew that was uncharacteristic of herself, despite the holes in her memory.

“Ugh… I’m already feeling it…” She groaned as she headed through into the dark.

What came next for the duo was a labyrinthine trail of brambles and thorns and strange noises in a pitch black void. It was unsettling in its atmosphere, but the ever curving downward path was otherwise uneventful. Something in Zora’s gut told her that progressing down a spiral like this was inherently wrong, but she pressed forward regardless.

Every so often one of the two would see movement in the pitch. A shadowed bat wing, or the blinking eyes of a cat in the dark. The faint glimmer of a snake’s scales. But nothing ever came for them directly, and they soon came to a stone door, etched with gears and painted in strange colors, that seemed to slide open readily.

Warily, they entered, soon coming through into a stone room, with a small channel of water running across a lower floor and beneath a set of stairs leading up. It was mossy and damp in here, but somehow, the feeling of it made Zora feel alive. Another set of stone doors greeted her on the upper floor of this room, and she felt the little dragon skitter into her tunic and out of sight.

And as soon as she approached the door, a voice made her nearly jump out of her new skin.

“You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you…?”

“Who the-?!”

Standing behind her, was what couldn’t even be called a human. The creature, cloaked in what might be a priest’s vestments, leaned hunched over to face her, though it was clear that it must have stood at least seven feet tall at full height. Its skin, strangely textured and chitinous, was bone-white, and a crown of bony horns topped its head. An extra set of arms at its back held a large backpack close to it, clasped in dozens on dozens of extraneous fingers – a pack covered from top to bottom in strange masks that felt like they should evoke some sort of visceral reaction from her, but that the holes in her memory prevented from showing through in full.

“Ah… I am but a humble wanderer. A collector of sorts...” The creature looked her over – bulbous, slitted yellow eyes meeting with clear, determined blue, and its pointed mouth curled into what could generously be called a smile. “You… may simply call me Samael.”

It felt like Zora knew that name. She felt wary around this creature, like a sense of imminent danger that had fallen on the room. “I… I see...”

“My child, you have no need to be afraid...” He brought himself uncomfortably close, and brushed her face with one of the arms that could be considered normal. That brush still contained one or five too many fingers for comfort. “I am a simple traveler. I wander far and wide in search of masks, you see. But… one of my masks, was stolen from me, recently, by an imp in the forest.”

“Wh...”

“So, here I am… at a loss… and now, I’ve found you. Please, do not think me rude… I have followed you. Because I…? Know a way to return you to your former self...”

“You… do? Really?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, why don’t we make a bargain, you and I? If you, can get back the precious instrument that the imp stole from you… I will teach you how to return to normal. And all you have to do… is get back what was stolen from me. A simple task, is it not?”

“Well, no, not really. I want to punch that kid in the stupid face for taking that...”

“Good. But… there is a catch.”

“There’s always a catch.”

“You see, I am a very busy man… and I’m afraid I must take my leave in three days, on the dot. I would be very gracious if you could bring that back to me before I must leave...”

“Sure, I guess...”

“You’ll be fine. Those eyes of yours are filled with courage… I am sure you’ll find it right away...” It leaned in even closer, taking her face into all four arms and effectively forcing her to look it in the eye.

“I can try...” She couldn’t help but feel very uncomfortable right at this moment.

“Mmhm… I am counting on you. Go forth, and find my mask.”