“And you really believe you’re ready for your Rite of Passage, Wyrmborn?” Sings-The-Wyld-Song crossed his heavily scarred arms across his chest.
The dark-haired youth in front of him nodded. Jackson Wyrmborn stood at 5’ 10”, a solid six inches shorter than his den-father. His hair was almost black and his eyes a brilliant blue. His jaw was set and stubborn. His arms were crossed and he was staring into the elder Galliard’s eyes. He would not be moved on this subject.
“Why do you think you are ready?” Sings asked.
“I have learned the ways of the Garou. I have learned the Litany by memory. I have learned a legend, song, or tradition from every tribe recognized by this Sept. I have learned what it means to be a Gibbus. I am ready.” Jackson spoke slowly, and his words had a sort of musical air to them. Charisma oozed from every ounce of his being.
“I recognize what you have done, Cub… But I recognize one thing you have not. You say you know what it means to be a Gibbus. I have seen you do great work in this endeavor but still one thing escapes you. You do not know who you are. It is time you sought out your own story. In a month’s time a red wolf will enter this Sept. He is a Gibbus. You will go to him and find out where you can learn the story of your Surname. He is not to tell it to you, but he will know someone who will. Once you find this person, you must learn the story without telling them your name. Get the story from them by any means necessary. Do you understand?” The Fianna kept his expression void of emotion.
“A red wolf will come and send me to another. I must get the story from them. It doesn’t sound very hard.” The youth shrugged.
“Arrogant as always.” The Den-Father smirked.
“Confident, Sings-The-Wyld-Song-Rhya. Confident.” He winked one blue eye and then walked off to prepare.
Sings-The-Wyld-Song watched the boy walk off. He shook his head and looked over his shoulder at a spot of empty air.
“Do you think she’ll tell him?” He asked.
A tall blonde appeared where there had been nothing.
“No.” The Blonde answered. “But I think he’ll find a way to get the story anyways. He’s his mother’s son.”
“Do you think she’ll be angry?” The Fianna smirked.
“Oh. Incredibly. I think that you’re a masochistic son-of-a-bitch. And I think you deserve everything you get.” The blonde frowned.
“Michael…”
“No, Link. I think that what you just did was cruel.” Michael ‘Burns-The-Bridge’ turned his back on his packmate. “But you are Den Father, not I.” He shifted to Lupus, loping away.
Sings-The-Wyld-Song was left alone. He shook his head and went back to tending the Tale Circle.
~*~
Jackson saw the giant red wolf treading through the Sept. He reeked of Stag’s blessing. This must be the one Sings spoke of. He walked over hesitantly.
“I was told you had a story for me.” Jackson said under the bloody sky. The sky was always red these days.
Dances-On-The-Tip-Of-The-Klaive looked over his shoulder. He cocked his head in question.
“My name is Jackson Wyrmborn. I am on my Rite of Passage. I was told you knew the story of my name. Or… rather… that you could send me to one who could.”
“Who told you this, Cub?” the wolf asked.
“Sings-The-Wyld-Song. Athro Gall-”
“I know who he is,” the wolf gave a tiny growl of annoyance. Jackson couldn’t tell if it was at him or someone else. “What did you say your name was?”
“Jackson Wyrmborn.”
“Born of the Wyrm?” the wolf frowned. “I will speak with Link.” He padded away.
~*~
Three days later the wolf returned with an address. He then padded away.
~*~
He knocked on the door feeling uncharacteristically nervous.
There was a pause.
He knocked again.
“Yeah, yeah, come in!” The voice traveled through the door.
He entered. There was a woman seated in front of… nothing? Her fingers moved as if she was typing on a keyboard and she was staring into a burned black wall.
“Um… Hello?”
The woman didn’t turn but the dog at her feet did. It turned and raised its head. Wait… Not a dog. A wolf. A wolf that seemed to be made from a hundred different swatches of fur all stitched together in a mockery of a wolf. It watched him and cocked its head, sniffing a few times.
“I said come in, didn’t I? What do you need?” She asked the wall.
Jackson got closer. When he did he saw that she was typing into empty air with one hand and writing something with her other hand. How could she do all this at once?
“Um… I… Uh… Dances-On-The-Tip-Of-The-Klaive-Rhya… He sent me and said that you could tell me a story.” Jackson rubbed the back of his neck, realized what he was doing, and stopped.
“He did?” She sounded confused but her hands never faultered. “Why? I’m not a Gibbus. That’s his job.” She looked to one of the Weaver Spiders that waited by her hand and spouted a string of Binary at it. It nodded and scurried away. Jackson quirked an eyebrow.
“It’s part of my Rite of Passage.” He explained. “And I have to ask you. It was part of it.”
“It was, was it? Specified me by name?” She sounds amused. “Which story?”
“The story of a boy named Wyrmborn.”
She stopped everything she was doing. All four or five things. It was like someone had hit a pause button. She did not look up. “Wyrmborn? What kind of a name is that?”
He swallowed. “That’s what I need to find out. Where it come from. Dances-Rhya said that you would know.”
“Well, I don’t. Get out.” She swallowed heavily.
“But…”
“I said-” The woman turned to face him. Her hair was bleach blonde and fell to her jaws. Her face was exquisite and her eyes a bright blue.
He knew those eyes.
She stared at him. Stared into a mirror of her eyes.
“What’s your name.” She asked.
“Alexander.” He gave his best friend’s name automatically.
She frowned deeply.
“What’s your Den Father’s name.” A demand.
“Sings-The-Wyld-Song. He’s-”
“Dead. That’s what he is.” She stood up and the chair went flying backwards. The wolf by her feet jumped to its feet and snarled at Jackson. He backed up.
“What-”
“Go. Run back to your Den Father and tell him that you will be given another challenge. Go.” She threw out her hand. He obeyed. He had to. What other option was there? He turned, shifted to Lupus, and ran from the room.
~*~
“And you’d give up that easily? Did you think that I would give you a challenge to find this woman if I thought she would just tell you? Any means necessary, Cub. Go back to her. Get the story.”
~*~
He was back again. Third day in a row. He didn’t even bother knocking. He just walked in. She was sitting at the desk in front of the blackened wall typing into the air.
“Will you tell me today?”
“Get out.”
“I need to get this story. Is there anything I can do to convince you?”
“No. I will not tell that story. Now get out.”
He obeyed.
~*~
“By any means necessary, you said. You didn’t say whether or not I could have help.”
“What did you have in mind, Cub?”
“Well…”
~*~
The outraged knock came at the door. Link answered it.
“You piece of shit.”
“Hello, Hacks-The-Umbra. You’re looking wonderful.” The Fianna moved aside. The Glasswalker entered the room and spun to face him, face nearly twitching with Rage.
“Call off your fucking dog. I don’t know what you’re playing at. But I’m through with this stupid fucking game. Give the kid a new challenge.”
“First of all, drop the mirage. I know what you really look like. Then we can talk about this.”
The Glasswalker shimmered and in the place of the tall blonde was a new woman. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun and her face was heavily scarred. In her right eye socket was a swirling mechanical eye. Her left eye was bright and blue. She had been beautiful once. Once upon a time before something had ruined her. Before the world had ended and she had fought against the Wyrm itself.
“Happy? Now. Give your pup a new challenge.”
“No.”
She drew a gun and pointed it at him. “I’m not kidding, Link.”
“You’d shoot a fellow Gaian now? After what the world has become? Put the gun down, Arianna.”
“Fuck you!” Tears rolled from her left eye. Her right couldn’t cry anymore.
He paused. “You know, don’t you?”
“Of course I know! I see my eyes staring back at me. See James’s face plastered on some kid’s body… Did you honestly think I wouldn’t know? That I wouldn’t figure it out…”
“He wasn’t supposed to tell you his name.”
“He didn’t. But after that debacle with the Fenrir all those years ago I picked up Truth of Gaia. I knew he was lying. And then I knew who he was… Wyrmborn, Link? Wyrmborn?! Is that some kind of cruel joke? You let me think he was dead!” Her whole body was shaking, except for the hand that still held the gun. She didn’t lower it.
In fact, quite the opposite. A woman stepped up behind her, tall and dressed in military garb. A General. Clashing Boom-Boom.
“For your own good, Arianna.”
“Fuck you.” The Glasswalker fired. The spirit behind her flashed and empowered the bullet. It blew a hole in Link’s side.
He snarled and doubled over. It took great effort to stand but he did. He faced her. There was more than just Clashing Boom-Boom now. The Patchwork-Wolf was by her side. Danu stood beside Clashing Boom-Boom but the two did not acknowledge each other. A grinning Monkey complete with crown hung from the Elder’s back.
Blood trickled from his mouth. He Stared into her eyes.
“Do you really believe the boy deserves to go his whole life never knowing?”
“Never knowing what? That his mother loved a Formor? That she made love to a creature of the Wyrm thinking it was her Kinfolk? That she carried the Wyrm child and then bore it? That he nearly killed me until Alice brought both of us to the Children of Gaian homelands where we were both healed? That he truly is Wyrmborn?” She spat the words in disgust. “Twenty years you let me think he was dead. Twenty. Years.”
“And now you know he is alive and still you run.”
She moved forward in a blur of speed and slammed the butt of her pistol against his temple. He crumpled.
“I beat you once, Sings-The-Wyld-Song. Never forget that I can do so again.” Her hand went to the knife that hung on her belt. She closed her hand around it… The hand that had the Spiral Scar.
He did not answer.
The Theurge left the room and her Spirit Pack followed
The video camera recorded an empty room until, ten minutes later, Jackson came to collect it.
~*~
A knock on the door.
She was packing and didn’t answer. He walked in. She looked up.
He held up the Video Camera with a frown on his face. He placed it in front of her
She paled and then let the Doppleganger fall away.
Mother and son looked at one another.
“Who are you?” He broke the silence.
“Arianna Fireau. Spirit-Encoder, Fucks the Wyrm Over, Hacks the Umbra… Elder Glasswalker Theurge of the Nation. Random Interrupt. Beta of the Pack Muintir under Danu. Friend of the Fianna and the Fenrir. Following Monkey King’s Ban and daughter of Clashing Boom Boom. Previously Director of the East Coast… before the world went to hell that is. And your mother. Who are you, Jackson Dimitri Fireau?”
He shook his head, feeling something grow cold in him. “I don’t know. I thought I did. And then I learn that my father was an Agent of the Wyrm and my mother…”
A tall black-haired man walked into the room.
“Ari! Ari! Are yeh in here? Are yeh-” His voice was cheerful and he paused when he saw the stranger. “Oh… So yeh found her then…” He smiled sheepishly. “Garret ‘Dreamwalker’ ‘Dances-On-The-Tip-Of-The-Klaive’. Born on four legs under a Gibbus moon. Son o’ Stag. Brother ta the Fae. Elder of the nation. Alpha of Muintir under the guidance o’ the great Danu. S’good tah see yeh again Jackson. How’re yeh doin’?”
Arianna glared at her packmate, who was oblivious as he’d always been. He just smiled and gave the impression that, were he in Lupus, his tail would almost certainly been wagging.
“I’m… I need to go.” He turned and pushed past Garret.
“What?” Garret looked at Arianna for clarification, but she had none.
Jackson ran.
~*~
It made sense now. The dreams where the Wyrm called to him. Promised him things. Whispered to him. The Wyrm was his father? And his mother was what? Was alive… That was something. And now he knew what he was. Who he was?
And he knew that he was a Glasswalker (cockroach thought the video camera idea was brilliant).
~*~
The two had already left. It was four days of hard running and a Questing Stone to catch them.
“Um… Arianna?”
The Elder looked over her shoulder. She had known he was coming. They had stopped to wait for him. “Yes, Jackson?”
“I want to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“About you… About me… Anything you want to teach me.”
The Glasswalker smiled faintly at her son.
“All right.”
Garret glanced up over his shoulder but didn’t speak. At least… Not verbally.
And… for an instant… They were a family again.
Topic: Family (Read 3334 times)