Wargs Revisited

"Got the perfect one for you, Bonethorn." 

"Seriously? I mean, okay, I'll ride a warg into battle, but don't expect me to-- hey! Get off! Stopping licking my ears-- that tickles!"

"See?"

"Grimstick, did you pick out the absolute least murder-y warg in the whole pack?"

"Not sayin'. But Willrender here isn't goin' to be a good companion for just any goblin. He wants scratches -- under the chin and behind the ears are best, but he'll take what he can get. You get wounded in battle, he'll probably just cuddle up beside you." 

"Well then, who's a good boy? Is it you? Is it?" 

"He seems to like you. Goregrim had cracked him over the head with a mace by this point."

"Goregrim is a sad excuse for a goblin. Great warchief, but he's just so angry all the time. Can't be good for his blood pressure. Not like you, Willrender, you sweet, sweet puppy."

"Keep your voice down!" 

"All right, I'm sold. I'm riding a warg into battle, and it's Willrender."

"Good. Now, whatever you do, don't expect him to bite anybody. You just ride him, keep him line with the others, and do your thing."

"Which is what?"

"Eh? Shoot arrows at the elves, Bonethorn. Willrender won't mind that, he just doesn't want to bite anybody himself."

"Right. Yes. Violence. I forgot about that part. Who's a cute giant murder puppy? Is it you?"

"Stop talking to the warg and focus. You're going to need to learn to ride him..." 

"Like this?" 

"...Like that. M'kay, I'll just leave you two to get acquainted. Remember, battle's in three days." 

MV: Elusive Sleep

By noon, Andy was about ready to climb the walls. He'd retreated to the ground-floor bedroom and made sure the blackout curtains were fully closed, but no amount of lying on the bed was enough to let him relax. He wasn't sure whether that was because he didn't feel entirely safe, or whether he'd simply had too much sleep -- or whatever passed for it -- already.

He pulled a book off the shelves almost at random, and found himself reading about naval warfare in World War I. Naval-gazing, he thought to himself, and chuckled quietly. Likely there was a whole hidden history here, spirits and monsters and sorceries all contributing to the outcome of the battles and the course of the war; he'd have to ask about that later. 

The book did its job, at least: after half an hour or so, he was settled enough to lie back and let himself drift. He didn't dream this time, and wouldn't have sworn that he slept except that when Steve came to get him it took a minute or so to wake back up. 

"Are they--?" Andy cut himself off, reaching out and realizing that his maker wasn't close enough to sense. 

Steve studied him for a moment, and Andy shook his head. "I can't feel him."

"Good," said Steve. "The strike team got here just after noon, but this is a safehouse -- not the best place to stage an ambush or even an arrest. Don't want to put the neighbors in danger, after all."

"Tulsa," said Andy, remembering. "Yeah, let's not get anybody else killed." He hesitated, then asked, "Is there any chance I could have a gun? I actually do know how to shoot."

Steve hesitated. "Let me think that over. Officially, no -- too big a risk. But this whole situation is dangerous."

Andy nodded and didn't say anything else. He was still dressed, and when Steve wandered back out of the room he slipped back into his shoes and followed.  

A Conversation 'Twixt Goblins

"Grimstick,these are wargs." 

"Yes! The traditional mounts of our people! ...Is that a problem, Bonethorn?" 

"You want me to ride into battle on the back of a warg?" 

"Keep your voice down, boy! Why is that a problem? Goblins have been riding wargs for a thousand years! It's a great honor!" 

"It just seems kind of dangerous." 

"Dangerous? 'Course they're dangerous! That's why we ride 'em! Strike fear into the hearts of humans and elves!" 

"I mean, dangerous to us." 

"Nonsense, boy! Gryphons is dangerous. 

You fall off one of those, and splat -- yer dead. Y'fall off a warg, you just get laughed at. Wargs is how goblins fight the Bigs. Well, wargs and ambushes." 

"I just feel like maybe I should be riding something that won't eat me if I get wounded in battle." 

"Like what?" 

"Like a pony, maybe?" 

"You know what happens if you show up to battle on the back of a pony when everybody else is ridin' wargs?" 

"...Wargs eat me?" 

"There you go." 

"...Okay, fair point. Put me on a warg." 

"I knew you'd come round. Too smart fer yer own good, but yer still a goblin at heart."

New Nightmares

Lot of weird dreams over recent weeks. Notable among them:

1. A thing like a deformed baby roughly the size of a squirrel, but with adult-sized hands on short wrists growing out of its sides. It was trying to pull me into a very small (like, 5") hole in the wall, and if I hadn't pulled harder it would have... absorbed and consumed me. 

2. A completely separate dream. I liked the part where I was camping with my friend. I enjoyed the part where we were LARPing with a bunch of other campers. I was less pleased with the weird rival family throwing rocks at my head. The tarot-ish reading that passed for the post-funeral reading of the will was weird. Having a random toddler get caught between the inner and outer doors of the elevator and fall down the shaft was horrible. 

There was a lot of "trying to find my sword again" in there, which I think is usually a sign of my brain trying to gear up to Get Things Done.  

Most recently, I had a -- slightly broken-up -- sort of Addams Family wedding scenario, except that the various parties involved were actually trying to kill each other. There was a river, which varied in width in various areas, where people would swim -- but there were also eels in there, carnivorous and about fourteen feet long, maybe eight inches across. The one I threw off was only eight feet long, but hit had been cut short. There was a point where I was walking on the pipes just under the water, and then back to the main areas where I needed to be; and then a lot of dastardly dealings, including the intrusion of the Shadow Tooth, which turned out to be a projection controlled by a yoga instructor whose controller I took away. 

It was all very weird, and I loved the strangeness of the settings.  

MV: Near Dawn

He'd meant to find a book, he really had. The television and its late-night movies were almost distraction enough. Watching the clock told him the time, but the knowledge didn't seem to mean anything. Andy settled back, wondering vaguely what might happen if he just stayed on the couch... or walked out into the dawn. 

"Hey there." 

Andy blinked and reluctantly looked up; a woman with curly dark hair was standing over him. "Do I know you?" he asked. 

She shook her head, a faint smile curling her lips. "Not at all," she said. "I'm Lorraine. I'll bring you a volunteer tomorrow, but for tonight, I'm standing in." She knelt down beside the couch. "Feed."

Andy kept his hands still. "It's fine. I don't want to."

Rodney came around the end of the couch and sighed. "You may not want to, but you need to. Word is you're good at doing it gently, but you have to have something. So do I."

Andy shook his head. "Let it be. It's not worth it."

Rodney drew in a sharp breath, but Lorraine held up a hand. "Would you believe me if I told you that I think it is?" She raised her head, studied him for a long moment, then reached out and lifted his chin. "Your keepers have been tasked with a lot of dumb assholes who've been turned to the dark over the years. Carol says you aren't one of them. She likes you, and Loida does too. Do you have any idea how rare that is?"

Andy shook his head. "I'm just trying to frustrate the bastard who made me," he said quietly. 

"Then do it by staying alive," Lorraine told him. "Feed."

He hesitated, then reached out and laid his hand on her head. The contact was immediate, and it was all he could do to force it down to a minimum. He snatched his hand back, clutched it to his chest. Definitely a monster...

Lorraine rose, with touches of gray in her dark hair and new lines on her face, but she smiled down at him. "Well done," she said. "I'll be back, and you'll see you haven't done me any permanent harm." She glanced at Rodney. "We'll get someone for you, too."

Andy waited until she'd gone, then turned a glance towards Rodney. He was feeling a little better, and apparently his curiosity had come back. "You don't drink, like, packaged blood?"

"Not if I can help it," Rodney said quietly, taking a long look around before sitting down beside him. "It's not just that it's less helpful and the taste is off, it's that it's actually a pretty valuable resource in mundane medicine. If I drink from a human, they're maybe a little woozy but they'll be fine in a day or two. If I raid a blood bank, maybe somebody dies from a motorcycle accident when they could have been saved." He looked around again. "If Steve or Veronica says anything, though, it's because it tastes disgusting."

MV: Rest and Recuperation

He would have slept again if he could have. The feather was still warm in his hands; it was the only spot of comfort in this whole bleak existence. The movie had changed, the good guys victorious, and now Andy was watching something where a group of soldiers was being stalked by some sort of alien hunter. Not Predator, though; this looked to be some sort of late-night rip-off. 

Rodney sighed and stood up. "My shift," he explained, when Andy glanced at him. "Hopefully the wolves will wear each other out and sleep. You're in the ground-floor bedroom, so make sure you keep the curtains closed. Once the sun comes up, your maker won't be able to move around -- not easily, anyway. The shadowbringer can move around, but won't have any but the most basic powers. The wolf will be the greater danger, but since we have two wolves here..." The vampire shrugged. "You're as safe as we can make you."

Andy looked up at him, then forced himself to speak. "Thank you."

Rodney sighed. "Vampire's not a bad bit. It was a shock, and I could have done without dying -- but that's the price of recruitment, and my maker was determined to bring in younger Kin with new perspectives. The fact that I turned out to be a traditionalist has frustrated her for half a century now."

Andy nodded, though he had the feeling that he was being humored -- or that Rodney was trying to comfort him. Either way, he just wasn't up for it. "Wight's a shock," he said quietly. "How common are we?"

Rodney hesitated, then said: "Surprisingly. Wights can't pass for shit, but they -- you --  get along surprisingly well. A few work for the Authority, a lot go into the reservations, and the rest... well... I doubt the wolves mentioned it, but there's a whole-ass criminal underworld and a lot of wights decide they're happy to take jobs as enforcers or necromancers there."

Fucking hell, no, Andy decided. "I wanted a normal life," he said, calmly.

Rodney shook his head. "You're still holding a phoenix feather, so I won't swear to anything -- but I don't think you get that. It's not impossible -- remote work is absolutely a thing, and some wights legit pull it off --  but you need particular sets of skills. Accounting, or IT, or just night shift for a security company." He grinned cynically at that last.

Andy nodded and turned his attention back to the television. It was a bit after midnight, and maybe not long until dawn; he'd lost track of the time.

MV: The Mirror Is Not Kind

Andy studied his new self in the mirror and concluded that Veronica was right: he was never going to pass for human. His hair, once a full, dark brown, had turned white at the roots. How is it still growing out if I'm dead? he wondered, but then decided that he had other, weirder things to worry about. His skin was gray and thin, the play of muscles underneath clearly visible...

I'm a monster. There wasn't any way to hide it, either. Even a ski mask and goggles wouldn't disguise the pale blue of his lips or the equally pale corpse-gray of his skin. Veronica had said that his hair wouldn't hold dye, but that was almost beside the point. His skin would give him away far before his hair did. Tattoos, or a fuck-ton of makeup, and even then... He'd never much participated in theater, except for that one time the teacher had specifically asked him to do a particular stunt involving rope-work, but he'd had friends who had. He knew that doing makeup well wasn't easy.

Surface appearance aside, he didn't look bad. His musculature had always been solid; becoming a wight hadn't changed that. He'd never been much for team sports, but anything he could do alone -- track and field, gymnastics, wrestling, fencing, climbing -- he'd happily taken part in.  Even a year of karate, right before his mother had decided that he should focus on something less violent, like guitar or (the following year) piano.

His mood, already dark, fell further. No, there was no coming back from this. Let his family think him dead, let him wish he could come to Amy's funeral to grieve and perhaps apologize... it was better to come to terms with it now. I have claws, he reminded himself, and I can see in the dark. Balanced against everything else, that didn't seem like much.

He came out of the bathroom, crossed to the living room, and sat down on the far end of the sofa from Rodney, who was watching some old buddy cop flick from the 1980s, with a mismatched pair of policemen forced to work together. Andy watched one of the cops throw himself off a rooftop after handcuffing himself to a would-be suicide, and thought, Yeah, I know exactly how you feel.

"That bad?" asked Rodney, quietly. Steve and Veronica were moving around in the house behind them, airing things out and setting things up.

When Andy didn't answer, Rodney settled back into the couch and turned his attention to the movie again.