Ian
Life was in bloom in Rocky Mountain National
Park. Not just the verdant green of the grass and trees, but the bustle
of tourists wandering its many trails. When Ian woke up that morning,
the air was 70 degrees and clear. Perfect weather for hiking. He passed a
number of people on his way to Longs Peak, most of whom were only there
for the day. As the elevation went up, the ambient temperature started
to chill, and the steady line of hikers thinned out to only a few. Up on
the mountain, it was still winter. The ice and the snow made climbing
treacherous.
It was the third day of his camping trip, and he
was seeking something more than what he'd found so far. The ground. The
trees. Rolling forests that seemed to go on forever. Above the mountain,
the sky spread out in a vast expanse of blue.
But to get there, he'd have to climb. So he did.
It
was easy going at first. Meditative, even - ascending the rocks by
instinct and muscle memory. By the time he was halfway up the peak he
was alone, and the air had turned cold and biting. The sound of the wind
was a low howl. From a distance it seemed a lonely picture: one man
climbing away from spring's welcome embrace toward the unforgiving
remnant of winter's last breath.
A couple of times he might
have slipped, but he was careful, and Ian always did have a knack for
keeping his balance. Somewhere around late afternoon he paused to rest
on an outcropping jutting out from the rock face. Leaning back against
he cold stone, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the thin
mountain air. His arms and legs ached. His pulse was beating hard
against the inside of his eardrums. He could never seem to get enough
oxygen out here.
anima
Not many people out
today. Tonight: not at this hour, not in this space, not on this
particular day. Not up here, the scrubby treeline left behind somewhere
near the beginning of the trailhead. Now, the sun is sinking behind
the ragged edge of the frontrange mountains among which he climbs and
the warmth of the day is rapidly disappearing. From where he sits -
atop a rock wall overlooking the scrubby wallow of a treeless valley
that has only started waking itself to the thought of spring, above a
band of striated granite damp the runoff and snowmelt he can see the
ship's prow prominent beneath the greater bulk of the mountain. The
outdoor solar privys nestled beneath another prominent little ridge that
will take quite the scrabble to get down.
The trail up the
peak: maybe tomorrow then, and only if he remembered his ice axe and
crampons - that much he recognized from nearly the first glimpse of
Long's Peak at the trailhead this morning. Closer now, he can see how
much of the climb will be on snow and ice: a wallow up the glacier, the
long traverse over a snowfield, hard rock scrabbles and then crosswise
up a long, steep couloir. Most people wouldn't tackle a climb like that
alone.
Ian isn't most people.
The night's gathering
in, though. Out here the stars are spectacularly spangled - but still
not bright enough to light the trail outside of a full moon. Time to
find a place to camp.
Something about the horizon tonight.
That glow.
Ian
He
had his gear with him - packed tightly and efficiently into a backpack
that he carried strapped around his torso. For this particular journey,
it was only the basic essentials: food, water, rope, axe... but there
was a tiny single-person tent, should he have need of it. The round-trip
climb was about 15 hours - six or seven to the top of the peak. He
hadn't really planned on stopping, but sometimes plans change. The
daylight disappeared faster than it seemed it should have. How long had
he been out here?
Ian got to his feet carefully and surveyed
the landscape above and below him. Wind gusted past, blasting his cheek
with a few sharp crystals of snow. The glow on the horizon pulled his
gaze back to the sky. He watched it for a few long moments, then turned
and began the steep ascent toward the snow. He needed to get out of the
wind, and it would provide more shelter than the bare rocks could.
anima
Sometimes the day disappears faster than it
should. Sometimes the edges of the world close in upon themselves, then
crack open again come morning. He is alone on the trail, night around
him. Below the thin glow of sunlight reflected upon the surface of a
shallow mountain lake. The skeletal frame of a ranger's cabin,
blackened at the eves and around the boarded-up windows tucked into the
leeside of the ridge he both eschews and skirts on the shores of the
lake. An elegant fringe of ice crusts over the protected southern
shore. Everywhere ice, the winter ice has melted. Even as he hikes up
toward the snow, he crosses these nameless, snaking little rivulets that
find every channel in the rock.
Has he been here before? Both the trail and the mountain take on a different aspect after dark. The sharp fin of the Ship's Prow
gains a ragged prominence as the ridge he follows tucks lower and
skirts beneath it. The mountain beyond gains both bulk and prominence -
dark and darker against the luminous night sky.
Rock beneath his feet now. Then snow in the slope at the bottom of the couloir.
No one else in sight.
Ian
[Per+awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN10 (2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( fail )
Ian
Somewhere
in the world, it was still daytime. Somewhere, but not here. Standing
at the base of the Diamond, Ian looked up and surveyed what he could
make out of the sheer cliff face. It was dark, but he saw better in the
dark than most people did. (Better, but not perfectly.) If he was going
to make camp he'd need to follow the keyhole trail past this part of the
mountain, into the more gradual slope where the snowdrifts piled
against the wall.
If.
But he wasn't tired. And the stars looked beautiful tonight.
"Are you there?"
He
said it quietly, almost as much to himself as to the mountain, and the
winter winds stole the words away from his lips even as he said them. He
didn't expect a response. Another moment, and he hesitated. Looked out
across the snow. Then turned and started to climb.
Ian
[Dex+Ath]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Ian
[And again!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN8 (4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )
anima
Are you there?
Ian asks and there's no response. No formal
response - though he doesn't seem to expect one. Merely the arcing
echo of the wind, funneling over the ridges. There's no response, but
that does not stop him, no.
He starts to climb.
--
Here
is a familiar rhythm, a familiar path against a familiar obstacle. The
loose strength of his wiry frame against the unmoving, implacable rock,
breath harsh in his lungs, fingers aching, thighs burning. The stars
pinpoint-bright overhead, the seam of the sky -
Difficult angles in the dark, but he pulls himself up and up with ease.
The slope sharpens and the holds grow less certain, more rare, and still he hangs on.
Somewhere
above, silhouetted against the impervious sky, this sketch, this shadow
of movement. Fleeting - rising, faster than he is, mind, and with an
almost impervious ease.
Ian
The climb here was
more dangerous than any other part of the peak. A steep drop descended
below Ian's feet, stark and cold and unforgiving. A couple of rock chips
skittered down the side of the cliff, dislodged by his hand where it
gripped a crack in the stone. The sound they made on the way down was
deceptively gentle. The climb was slower than Ian would have liked,
given the wind and the darkness and the fact that he had to stop
periodically to reaffix his rope tether (lest he slip and fall.) But the
landscape here was beautiful at night, the slopes and forests below
stretching out far into the horizon.
It became a rhythm,
almost. Like dancing or running. The sharp crack of the spike going into
the rocks. The reach of his arm - seeking, holding, pulling himself up
to the next ledge. The rocks were cold and sharp beneath his hands, the
surface under his feet slick enough to be worrisome. He'd done this
before - not here, but on other mountains. He knew how to be careful.
And he was (careful.) But he was also hungry. The sore heat from his
arms and legs mixed with a prickling sensation in the subdermal layer of
his skin. Some crawling, impatient drive. A need to move. To climb. (To
hunt?)
Something was there. High in the shadows. The flicker
of motion caught Ian's attention and he stopped still, his body pressed
against the rock-face as he looked up, searching.
His heartbeat jumped. After a few beats, he kept climbing. Faster now, trying to catch up.
Ian
[Per+Alertness diff 7 -2 (acute senses)]
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 4 )
Ian
[And Dex+Ath again, diff 9 this time]
Dice: 8 d10 TN9 (1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 1 )
anima
The
flick of motion in his peripheral vision, somewhere above. Some
plateau, some rockledge, which dissolves into a near-perfect stillness
that does not even seem to breathe when he tips his head back: pauses in his climb, and look, stares, seeks.
There,
again, rising, and now his efforts redouble and he is on the move.
Struggling - straining to go faster but there's a rhythm to this that
cannot be rushed. Driving in the anchors, moving the rope that keeps
him safe, assessing each new hold, practically blind on an unfamiliar
rockface, which only sharpens its prominence.
He can follow the lilting movement of whatever it is above him darting quick and light-footed, before it disappears far above.
He could go faster if he dispensed with the protections, and simply climbed.
Or hell, maybe he's confident enough that he can find and track whatever it is again: in his own time.
Ian
He
could go faster, yes. Though it was, by all accounts, an unwise thing
to do. Scaling an unfamiliar peak alone in the dark was already pushing
the bounds of what any sane climber might hope to get away with. And at
this height, if he fell... he might very well not survive.
Ian
was not suicidal. He had been... once. A long time ago. That moment
seemed both close and very far away. One could add up the things that he
had survived, and suddenly falling off a mountain no longer seemed like
the worst thing that could happen.
Maybe it was frustration,
or maybe it was the sense that somehow these things (these man-made
things - ropes and anchors and the synthetic shield of his clothing) did
not actually belong here. Ian took a breath to steady his heartbeat and
ripped the anchor out of the rocks. It took a few moments for him to
free himself of the encumbrance of his gear, but once he did, he reached
out over the dark expanse of space beneath him and dropped it all into
the void.
Then he pulled off his gloves, and his hat, and his coat. Each of these things went down the mountain, discarded. The wind was cold. Finally his boots and socks. He always did move better barefoot.
He
was in danger of exposure now, though a Life mage always had ways to
combat that. Regardless, he started climbing again. Faster, easier. More
like the lithe creature that moved in the shadows.
Ian
[Stamina]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Ian
[Wits+Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
anima
Ian
sheds all these things, divests himself of human accoutrements and
human gear and gear and human protections: not simply rock anchors and
the light and strong synthetic rope he bought, but other, simpler
things. Climbing boots, climbing gloves, hat and coat. The warm woolen
socks: drops them down below him into darkness.
If he
doesn't come back and gather them up before the morning, the strange
occasion of finding all these things littering the trail will lead the
earliest group or two of hikers to call the park rangers. Maybe
there'll be a small missing person's hunt, to make sure there's no one
lying in a gully with crushed vertebrae and a broken leg.
No matter.
--
There's
laughter. Not precisely audible and really quite far from human: the
sense of it begins when he flings down the first anchor. Builds as he
strips himself down to certain essentials. Physical: spiritual.
Laughter: more inside him than without him, felt more than heard,
the tattoo of it against the back of his skull, quite as coy as he is.
Not precisely mocking, but hardly gentle. Call it: challenging.
--
He climbs: naked.
This
is dangerous, and any other climber would call it damn near suicidal:
an unfamiliar cliff face, a cold, often snow-bound path lost in absolute
shadow, only the sky shining, illuminated, above. Searching, blind,
with fingers and toes for each little perch, always maintaining three
points of contact with the face of the rock. Muscles aching, trailing
the path of a swift shadow barely visible.
Wait.
Not trailing.
Ian
hauls himself up over the edge of the cliff face and finds himself on
the edge of a ridge that eddies out into a gentle snowfield rimmed with
tall, dark pine trees heavy with snow. He knows that he is well above
the treeline and yet: here they are, so dark where they are not drenched
in snow and limned with reflective moonlight. The bulk of the mountain
on whose shoulder this wood sits is massive, prominent. The wind
sharper, colder still. Beyond this one peak: even taller giants rise
and rise and rise like black teeth against the luminous sky.
All is quiet. His breath is harsh in his throat and both fingers and toes are lightly abraded. He's freezing. Nothing is moving but he is not really searching out movement. He is thinking quite differently in this precise moment: anticipating rather than following.
No need to follow when you can lead.
Ian
[Life 2 - Resist Cold, coincidental diff 5 -1 (focusing with blood) -1 (practiced and/or taking his time)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Ian
Somewhere
during the climb, the mountain became larger: his intended destination
now only a stop on a much more arduous journey. Ian's hands grasped the
edge of the cliff as he pulled his weight over the edge, numb fingers
clawing at cold stone. The air was freezing, striking sharp against his
exposed skin. Every joint and muscle in his body ached from the climb.
Where his feet touched down, blood stained the snow. Breathing deeply of
the dry winter air, Ian got to his feet and surveyed the landscape -
the tall pines and the looming presence of the mountain as it reached up
into the black sky.
A voice uncoiled somewhere in the back of his thoughts: coy, feminine. Laughing. A challenge?
This
is why he was here, standing in the snow with naked, bleeding feet.
Because he needed to try - needed to find that part of himself that was
more than a collection of mundane details. The name on his birth
certificate: Ian Tao Lai. The things that he owned: a nice car, a
collection of art films on blu ray, a closet full of overpriced clothes
with designer labels. The jobs on his resume: dancer, model, bartender.
Beyond that, what was he? Life. Hunger. Instinct.
Human? Animal? Was there a difference?
He
was also something else - something more than both of those. And that
part of him was why he was here. Without evolution, life became
stagnation.
Kneeling down, he curled his fingers into the snow
and scooped up some of the blood from his torn feet. He closed his eyes
and drew a line down the center of his forehead; the slope of his nose -
down to his lips, where he tasted salt and copper. He focused on his
heartbeat - on the blood moving through his veins, keeping him alive,
keeping him strong. And he bared his teeth as he pushed with his Will,
asserting his existence against the creeping chill of the cold. Speeding
up his slowing heart. Warming the core temperature of his body.
He felt it like a surge of primal energy. His breath was a sudden gust of heat in the cold air.
And
when it was over, he looked down at the snow-blanketed woods and began
to run, heading for the trees, and toward the rising peak of stone
behind them.
anima
Hmmm.
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
Ian
[Dex+Ath]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
Ian
[and again!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
anima
Hmmm.
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Ian
[Stamina 1]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Ian
[Stamina 2]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
anima
Ian
no longer feels the cold. Smears: the blood-stained snow over his face
and mouth and chest, remembers that a heart beats beneath the
protective shield of his sternum. Reaches inside, feels it beating, and starts to move.
Runs:
flat out over the snowfield, steeper than he understood in the
darkness. Hurtles himself toward the treeline, kicking up snow behind
him as he goes. The world is bright over him: shining stars, brilliant
sky,
and then: dark and dark and dark. Every sound cushioned
by the heavy branches of the pines and deadened by the deep drifts of
snow. Harder to run here than he imagined at the start: on two legs he
has to plow through drifts that are knee deep, even thigh-deep and the
work itself is exhausting, but he pushes through. Framed by the harsh
rasp of cold (he does not feel it) dry (that he feels) air in the back
of his throat, which pulls the whole of the drifting world into a
peculiar sort of focus.
Gradually he becomes: aware, you see, that he is not alone.
He
is shadowed by another, larger and more graceful, unhindered by the
drifts through which he has to force himself. This coy presence, at the
edge of his vision again - lashing movement and a certain - goading -
challenge inherent in the bend and sweep of its frame in his periphery.
When
he finally surges past it (and somehow the wood seems much, much deeper
than it appeared, somehow the peaks he was seeking seem quite as far
away, now, as they ever did) Ian might be forgiven for feeling a certain
- primal - surge of triumph.
Ian
He’d chased the winter from his lungs, but winter
was not a thing so easily conquered. It was there in the snow and in
the dark. In the press of chill that slid over his skin. As he ran, the
drifts grew deeper, clinging to his legs as he pushed his way through
them. He wasn’t running out of urgency, or to pull away from the
shadowed, graceful creature in his periphery. He was running because he
could. Because the pain and the struggle and the coursing of his blood
made him feel more alive.
When he noticed that he’d pulled
ahead, he stopped. His body went still, poised in the deep snow like
some kind of predator, his posture and his gaze steady and alert. How
much could he see here? The darkness was thick between the tall,
blanketing pines. He turned to regard the creature who’d been shadowing
him, eyes drifting over the shadows in search of something that yet
moved. Did she stop? Or did she dart past him?
Almost, he
spoke again. But that kind of language felt wrong here. So he crouched
down in the snow and tilted his head and watched; listened. The scent of
pine resin was sharp in the air, mingling with the cold clarity of ice
and earthy minerals of the stone mountain. Even here, in this
inhospitable place, there was life.
Ian
[Sensing Life: Life 1, diff 4 -1 (practiced - using his heartbeat as a focus)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
anima
There: a shadow. Another shadow that sweeps and surges - yes, past him now, while he pants in the darkness.
While he: watches.
While he: listens.
While
he reaches out through the strange shadowed density, the close-wrapped
stillness of this place to touch the patterns of the world around him,
real and unreal, layered bright together.
She does not
have precisely that sort of tattoo against his magical senses - and yet
he can sense, dimly, faintly, dully, the silvery connection between the
two. If she has a beating heart: it is simply another iteration of his
own.
Which is larger, stronger in his chest than he has ever before understood before.
--
She is moving again: fast and faster now.
He will need more than his own two legs to keep up with her.
Ian
He
remembered a time, once, when he had been something other than human.
When his body was not what it was now. The memory of it still felt oddly
close to him, though that Awakening had been... years ago. He
remembered the way his paws felt ghosting along the ground. The way the
brush of wind had seemed like electric current against his face. The way
that everything had been sharper, clearer, more alive. He remembered
the weight of it, and the ready responsiveness of all that muscle and
tendon.
He also remembered the reasons why he'd changed - and the reasons why he'd walked away.
This
was not that night, and he was not the same person he had been then.
When he opened his senses, he sought some deeper connection. A grounding
link to the Tapestry around him. Perhaps he was looking inward - for
what was this place but a landscape inside his own heart? Was he trying
to understand her or himself? Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe there wasn't
a difference.
She wanted to run. So did he. He wanted to run
and to climb until everything else in his mind disappeared - empty but
for the surge of his blood and his breath that screamed I am here. I exist. I am alive.
The
rest of his clothes were left discarded in the snow. Whatever he was,
whatever he could be, they would only get in the way. And then he ran.
The snow was thick and heavy and clung to his legs, but he ran anyway.
Pushed through it. Pushed past the aching exhaustion in his limbs. And
all the while he could hear his heart in his ears, beating deeper and
heavier and louder.
He didn't so much Will the change as accept it - surrender to it. The way he had that night all those years ago.
Ian
[Be a tiger, Ian! diff 8 to start, definitely spending WP - will extend as much as he can]
Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (4, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Ian
[diff 9]
Dice: 2 d10 TN9 (1, 6) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Ian
[down to 3 WP, and again]
Dice: 2 d10 TN9 (5, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Ian
[aaand again]
Dice: 2 d10 TN9 (3, 7) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Ian
[last WP!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN9 (3, 7) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
anima
Ian
sheds his clothes and it is not clear how he manages it. This is not
the fumbling strangeness of human thumbs and cuffs and collars, the
inevitably inelegant dance of getting out of his goddamned underwear.
There is far less work, and it takes much less time, than it took him
to shed all that gear, back on the physical mountain he was climbing
when he came:
here, wherever here is.
Ian sheds his clothes and he does it virtually with a thought.
Steps
out of them or perhaps wills them away and then moves again, surges
forward, the drumbeat of magic in his body and in his lungs, in his
heart and in his blood, a hungry arc bright against the framing
darkness.
He runs.
He works.
He Works.
He
moves: reaches for something he remembers, now more with his body than
his brain, folds himself back into his body and begins to peel what is
essential out of himself. No longer on two legs - though somehow not precisely
four - he is low and elegant - little more than a shadow surging
beneath the overhanging pines. As the elevation rises, the drifts
deepen and yet: like her - he glides over them now, rather than
floundering through.
Soon enough they leave behind the piney
woods. Rising still, snow and ice a skim coat over the shoulder of the
mountain that seems both metaphorical and actual: which rises and rises
and rises, above them, absolutely wreathed in mist, opaque and dense.
There is a kind of triumph radiant in her as they run, as they rise that
he can feel but beneath and above that, always the push, the urge, to
movement, to rise. She would challenge him all the way to the summit -
-
but he has spent himself so thoroughly, exhaustion (of the will, if not
the body) begins to assert itself beneath and around the exhilaration
of the hunt.
Ian
Triumph, yes. Exilaration -
visceral and unguarded. They both felt it. And they ran together now,
swift and agile as hunting animals. The wind played patterns in the soft
fur that now lined his skin, and when his toes flexed there was the
presence of something sharp and hooked. The landscape looked different
like this - even the slimmest shards of moonlight were bright and
luminous.
He'd given everything he had to find this place -
both within and without. And he was tired now, more than he could
remember having been in a very long time. The exhaustion went down to
his marrow, and deeper still... a spiritual as well as physical
exhaustion. But he was happy, too. How could he not be?
I am here to be here. Like these rocks and sky and snow.
Some
mountains could not be scaled. Perhaps this one was one of those.
Perhaps he'd given everything he had and could go no further. But she
would challenge him all the way to the summit, and he was yet standing.
Moving. Breathing. And he would climb until he couldn't anymore. Perhaps
that would not be much farther. Perhaps it would be farther than he
could imagine. (He had already come that far.)
So he grasped
the stone wall with his clawed hands and began once more to haul himself
upwards, looking forward as he did - toward the mist and the dark,
opaque sky.
Ian
[Str+Ath]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Ian
[Stamina]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2) ( botch x 1 )
anima
Do di do.
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
anima
Some
summits can be had the first time a mountaineer chances a ridge.
Others are eternal, somehow: they require long sieges, endless
assaults. What he knows - and there is a point where it knows it
so clearly and thoroughly that he must understand it in the very marrow
of his bones - is that he has come as far as he can now. He has spent
himself. And still she is there - peripheral, residual, harrying and
leading and rising rising rising. He can go no further.
There is something - (yes) - new in him. Some opening. Some shift,
which is paradoxically both smaller and greater than himself. And yet:
he digs in his clawed hands, to drag himself still further, leaves
behind the windswept ridge on which they had been racing, and follows
her into the clouds.
Colder here, sharper, strange. The mist
wraps him right 'round until he can see no more than his forepaws in
front of him, the face of the rock. And there is more here, stranger
things, the murmuring of voices he cannot quite distinguish, which still
somehow make his heart - well - seize. By which we mean: stop, only for a moment, but wrenchingly so, before it thunders back to life.
And then: then - something else,
disorienting and disconcerting, or perhaps it is the elevation.
Everything goes blank: black. Creates itself and comes undone.
Conciousness deserts him.
Ian knows nothing more.
anima
(Ian will awake the next morning still on the trail: he has 4 lethal dmg from a bad fall, WP 0, and Arete 3.)
