Deep within a untamed and tangled forest, its trees covered in wild, chaotic growth, across a immense chasm filled with swirling blue mist, there was a massive, ancient castle. Though the structure was clearly long abandoned, it stood proudly, shrugging off the weight of ages that slowly threatened to tear it down, and still had an unearthly beauty to it. The castle looked as though it were carved from solid stone, but upon closer inspection, it was in fact built from millions of tiny, perfectly square blocks stacked upon one another, and fitting so tightly together that it would be impossible to even slip a hair between them. Every angle of the castle was sharp and precise, even in the areas where a tower or archway had collapsed.

While the castle itself was magnificent to behold, it paled in beauty to what was above. Hovering exactly fifty meters above the structure were two geometrically perfect dodecahedrons, one glowing bright orange, the other with exactly half of its faces black and half silver. These two objects slowly circled the perimeter of the castle, causing the very stone to change color. When the glowing orange object passed, the stones turned into the purest white marble, and radiated shining warmth. When the black and silver object passed, the stones became perfect black onyx twinkling with thousands of small pinpricks of light, and became cool and soothing. These twin objects lazily chased one another around the perimeter of the edifice, always following their sibling in an endless dance of light and dark.

If one were to descend into the castle itself, they would find a multitude of chambers, all long deserted by whoever had built it. The only inhabitants that could be seen were dozens of large, silvery spiders, who filled large swatches of each room with their glimmering, crystalline webs. These webs, rather than detract from the splendor of the castle, only added to it, creating a shimmering lattice that glowed in the light cast by the twin objects above.

Within one of the deepest chambers of the castle, there stood a mirror. Like the rest of the structure, the mirror was geometrically perfect, all of the six edges of its reflective pane perfectly parallel to its twin. And, below this reflective masterpiece, there was something completely out of place: a large raven splayed out on the floor, twitching periodically.

Slowly, the bird began to stir, and with a deep and pained groan, she carefully opened her eyes. Yet, as soon as she raised her eyelids, she slammed them shut again, the very act of seeing sending a wave of searing agony into her brain. It wasn’t just her eyes that hurt though. Almost every part of her body ached, including the parts that shouldn’t be able to, like her feathers, the tips of her claws, and her beak. After a few moments of simply focusing her mind on regenerating whatever injuries she had, she tried the whole “opening my eyes and using them to detect pictures” thing a second time. This time, instead of her brain playing chicken (and losing) with the act of seeing, she managed to get a good look at the chamber she was in. Making note of how the walls were regularly alternating between two colors, Whispered Secrets Carried Upon Wings of Dawn, or Dawn Wings for short, slowly began to collect her thoughts.

‘Well, either my brain’s scrambled and I’m seeing the world upside down, or I’m on my back.’ She thought to herself. Shifting her body a little bit, she got a sensation that wasn’t pain and could feel the hard stone of the floor along her spine and the back of her wings, the latter which she could tell were spread out to her sides.

‘Yea, on my back. But, still alive… yay. Now if I could just get the license number of that giant, burning oil tanker Godzilla threw at me.’ She mentally groaned as she pulled her wings in, and began to roll over to get to her feet. ‘Ugh, that doesn’t feel good.’

As she tried to stand, her body was hit with another fierce wave of agony. Flopping back down to the ground, she discovered that, while resting on the ground was kinda painful, it hurt significantly less than trying to stand.

‘Alright, alright, you win body. I’ll stop trying to move you till you’ve had a chance to fix yourself up.’ She thought as she pushed more of her spirit into repairing her wounds. Slowly the pain began to subside as her spiritually enhanced flesh continued to mend. ‘Would be nice if I knew where in Raven’s name I am.’

*Several hours earlier, in another world*

Dawn Wings slowly turned her head as she flew over the urban hellscape that was the slums of South East Los Angeles. As much as she would rather be somewhere up in the mountains, enjoying the spring air with her mate Cloud Chaser, she had a job to do, and Raven be damned if she wasn’t going to do it right. There had been over a half a dozen kidnappings in this area the last few weeks, and her gut told her that there was something more sinister than just the ground apes doing the normal evil shit they do to each other. The break-ins had been too quiet and too clean.

The police, as usual, were useless. The neighborhood was one of the poorer ones in the area, and most of the families were illegal immigrants. Since they weren’t likely to get any decent bribes out of it, the cops were less inclined to give a rat’s ass than they usually were. The fact that whole families were missing allowed the disappearances to be written of as them simply leaving to keep ahead of the immigration authority. Dawn Wings, however, was not so swift to dismiss the vanished people as a bunch of humans avoiding deportation. Not that she would mind being wrong.

But her instincts said that it probably wasn’t anything benign.

After the fourth disappearance, she had spent two weeks studying the locations, times and distances between the incidents, and she had begun to see a pattern emerging. And if there was one thing she knew from all her years in this game, it was to never ignore a pattern. It was this pattern that led her to this block. If she was right, and she really hoped she wasn’t, this was the next spot to be hit.

‘Doubt it’s the local leeches.’ She thought as she landed on the roof of a dilapidated apartment building. ‘Doesn't really fit with the Kuei-jin's M.O. And the Camarilla isn’t interested in starting an open war over this area. Could be the cartels. Argh, stop it. No sense in psyching yourself out.’

Dawn Wing’s thoughts trailed off as she began to focus on her job. Calling upon her power, she closed her eyes and she sent spiritual energy flooding into them. When she opened them again, she could see as clear as if it were noon on a bright, sunny day. Of all the powers she had at her disposal, this one was probably among her favorites. Night scouting was so much easier when you could see perfectly, but your enemies couldn’t.

Now came the hard part: waiting. Taking a deep breath, Dawn Wings focused her mind and allowed her consciousness to fade away as she entered an observational trance. Soon, conscious thoughts were all but gone, and her mind was lost in the pattern.

Despite the late hour, there were still some people out and about, though they were mostly transients. Soon, even they moved on, leaving her alone. The minutes wore on into one hour. Then two. Some rats scurried around in the alleyways. A stray dog rummaged around in an overturned trashcan. Night insects buzzed. Reflexively, she stretched her wings and flapped them a couple of times to get her blood flowing again, before settling back into her vigil.

‘Better a dull night than an eventful one.’ A tiny voice in the back of her mind thought as she adjusted on her perch and settled back in.

More time passed. The night had settled comfortably over this section of the city, bringing a pleasant calm that was so rare in such an urban area. Then, the pattern began to subtly, yet suddenly changed. The dog, which had lain down to sleep, suddenly woke up and ran down the road and out of sight. The rats vanished. The insects went silent. Her conscious mind came rushing back. Instantly on alert, she called on another of her gifts, one that would let her detect the presence of threats. There were at least four of them nearby. And whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t something that normal animals liked. Now fully snapped out of her trance, Dawn Wings began to actively scan the neighborhood from her vantage point.

‘Where are you? Where are you…’

‘THERE!’

It was a group of what looked superficially like four humans. To normal sight, they might have blended into the darkness of the alley they were hiding in, but to Dawn Wings’ enchanted sight, they stuck out like a mall Santa streaking in the summer. The first thing she noticed was how deformed they looked. One had a misshapen pair of arms that resembled tentacles more than limbs, and overly large, pure green eyes. One looked like she was made of black, rubbery plastic, and had no hair on her body. Another had an enormous, distended stomach and lacked lips over his mouth, making his face look like a macabre grin. The final one was covered in some sort of grotesque boils, and had arms clearly far to long for her body, with her hands ending in long, sharpened talons.

‘Fomori. That’s not good.’ Dawn Wings thought. Of all of the Wyrm’s minions, these bane possessed humans were the most wretched. But, as pitiable as they were, they were Wyrm minions, and deserved little more than a quick death.

The rubbery one quickly looked out of the alley, checking down the streets before gesturing for the others to follow her. Skittering across the street, they swiftly made their way to one of the smaller buildings. Arriving at the front gate, Dawn Wings watched with interest as the rubbery one compressed her body and squeezed through the gap under the barrier, before opening it and letting her companions in. She repeated the same trick on the front door by compressing herself and squeezing through the mail slot. After she unlocked and opened the door, the other marauders entered the building.

When she was a green, hotheaded rookie, Dawn Wings might have attempted to stop them. Even as weak as she was compared to her fera cousins, she could still have probably handled four formori. But, this stank of something bigger. Most fomori were not subtle like this. If they were being stealthy, then there must be more to it. At best, they were kidnapping people to eat them, in which case once she found their lair, she could deal with them. But, if they were serving a higher master, finding the guiding force and pointing the local garou in that direction would be a smarter course of action. Or even better, alert the local revs. The Kuei-jin probably wouldn’t take kindly to some wyrm spawn messing around in their territory. Blood suckers they might be, but she knew they were bloodsuckers that hated wyrmspawn. There were so many effective ways to handle this that didn’t involve her getting in the middle of it. It wasn’t her job to fight.

Her job was to figure out where to point the guys who’s job it was to fight.

Minutes passed, and Dawn Wings didn’t hear a sound. No screams. No crashing. Nothing. After an eternity of moments, the fomori emerged, each carrying a bound, gagged and unconscious human. Tentacles had a child under each arm, while pot-belly had a teenage girl held in his flabby limbs. Boils had what Dawn Wings could only assume was the children’s mother slung over her shoulders, with rubber-made carrying what was likely the human’s husband. Five victims in all had been subdued, trussed up like hogs, and silently dragged out of their home in the dead of night. Yea, these were not your typical fomori.

Taking a quick glace around the street, rubber-made gestured for the others to head out. Unseen on the rooftop, Dawn Wings spread her wings and quietly took off in pursuit, making sure to stay back as far as possible while still keeping her targets in sight. The fomori quietly and carefully made their way through the alleyways to a large, unmarked van. With expert precision, they tossed their captives into the back of the van, before piling in and starting the vehicle up. The van slowly began to drive out of the neighborhood, unaware they were being tailed from the sky.

*****

It was nearly an hour later when the fomori pulled the van into the parking lot of an abandoned industrial building. As the four of them got out and began to unload the hostages, Dawn Wings landed in a nearby tree. She had to admit, they were good. They had gotten on and off the freeways, driven through a dozen suburbs, and crisscrossed back and forth between residential and industrial areas at least six times. If any normal pursuer were tracking them, they would have been lost a long time ago.

Luckily for Dawn Wings, she wasn’t a normal pursuer. It wasn’t easy, but she managed to keep the van in sight, though she had to use more of her gifts to do so. Still, the investment paid off, and had found what she was sure was their hideout.

Even without her gifts to show it, every one of her instincts was screaming that this place was dangerous, and that the area was completely polluted with Wyrm taint. Most of the brick structure had fallen into disrepair. Two of the four walls were collapsing, and the windows were broken. Dozens of abandoned chemical drums littered the yard, many of them still spilling out their contents onto the ground, creating a mire of sludge that stank of oil and something metallic. There was almost no vegetation, and what was present was sickly and stunted. Remnants of an old sign read “Green Side Industrial Chemicals”, though the lettering was barely legible due to age.

The site instantly ruled out Pentex as the immediate backers. Too dilapidated. A manifest bane spirit maybe? Black Spiral Dancers? Dawn Wings stopped wracking her brain, and instead focused back on the topic at hand.

‘Don’t speculate. Observe.’ She chided herself.

After watching the fomori carry their hostages into the building and waiting for a minute, she silently glided over to the structure. The sense of impending danger she felt went from a subtle chill to a fullblown icy shudder. Quickly invoking her gift again, Dawn Wings detected at least two other threats inside, though there was some sort of interference deeper within the building. Now really on edge, she followed them inside, doing her best to keep out of sight. Two unknown threats and the possibility of getting caught inside without an easy escape route was not what she considered an ideal situation.

The fomori soon arrived in a large room. Dozens of enormous, rusted vats filled the space, broken piping and catwalks hanging precariously from the ceiling. As the fomori approached the center, she saw what had set off her threat detection powers, causing her to freeze in place. She stood completely still, barely breathing as two large, bestial shapes emerge from deeper within the complex. The creatures were massive, standing at least three feet taller than the fomori, and were quite a bit bulkier. Beyond their size, their most obvious features were their lupine heads, tails, clawed hands and digitigrade legs, making them look like humanoid wolves. One was hairless, and covered in a multitude of ornate scars. The other had black fur, a noticeable underbite, and a pair of mismatched eyes, one visibly larger than the other.

‘Black Spiral Dancers’ Dawn Wings thought ‘sometimes I hate being right.’

This was getting far more complicated. If there were Black Spirals involved, this was more than she could even hope to deal with on her own. She knew that she should leave. But, she couldn’t. The job wasn’t done. All she had confirmed was that there were Wyrm-wolves here. She had no idea what they were doing, or why they were taking those people. If she was going to call in the garou, she needed to know what her allies would be charging into. Not having enough information when striking an enemy stronghold could be lethal. And she wasn’t going to send her friends into the fire without some idea where the gas leak was.

“Yoo gut ell of tham?” Underbite asked as he gestured towards the bound humans.

“Yes.” Rubber-made responded, “And we weren’t seen. I’d think by now you’d trust us to do our job.”

“Yoo ded bothch the furst joub yoo wur saent un.”

“That was months ago. We’ve got this.”

“Hmph. Suo yoo sei.”

“Enough! Lets go. The master is waiting.” Scar-skin growled as he turned back towards the passage he had come from, his partner following suit, with the fomori falling into line behind them.

‘Master?’ Dawn Wings thought as she slowly began to follow, her mind racing because her power hadn’t detected a third new threat in the building. ‘Well this keeps getting better and better.’

*****

Deeper and deeper into the abandoned factory they descended. Dawn Wings kept to the ground or glided when she had to descend any stairs, knowing that the flapping of her wings might draw attention from the Wyrm-party she was following. Once during the trek, the teenager had awoken. Panicking, she had begun to struggle, but was quickly knocked out again by a sharp blow to her head from scar-skin, who reprimanded pot-belly for letting her make any noise. The fomori apologized to the werewolf before falling back into line.

Eventually, the Black Spirals and fomori reached a large set of rusted steel rolling doors. With a mighty heave, the wyrm tainted werewolves pulled the doors open, the wheels screeching in protest as they rolled along their rails. Once open, the six of them and their five hostages filed in. From where she was hiding, Dawn Wings couldn’t see into the room, but every one of her instincts was screaming that there was something extremely dangerous in there.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Dawn Wings crept forward, making sure to keep to the shadows as much as possible. This was the final piece to the puzzle. Once she knew what was in that room, she could get out. She felt bad for whatever was about to happen to that family, but she knew, ultimately, there wasn’t anything she could do for them now. Heroics worked in the movies and comic books. Reality wasn’t nearly so forgiving.

As she cautiously peeked around the corner of the door, she had to suppress a croak of horror at what she saw. The room, clearly once a large storage space, was now a charnel pit. A forest of chains hung from the ceiling, most of them ending in large steel hooks covered in dried gore. Where the walls weren’t covered in sprays of blood, sheets of flayed human skin, or corpses violently nailed to the surface with rebar spikes, were dozens of glyphs that shone with angry red light. On the floor, there was a massive, elaborate runic circle carved into the concrete, at the center of which was an enormous bonfire. One look at the flames told Dawn Wings that this was no ordinary, healthy fire. Rather than clean, orange flame of true fire, it was an almost waxy, sickly green flame that roiled and hissed in its brazier. It was balefire, the corrupted, toxic perversion of true flame that came from the spiritual effluence of the Wyrm.

The fomori quickly began to take their captives to five points along the edge of the circle, where they stripped the unconscious humans naked before shackling their wrists and ankles together. Once the captives were restrained, underbite threw a switch, causing five pairs of chains to lower from the ceiling. Once low enough, the fomori grabbed and drove the barbed hooks at the end of each chain through the captive’s shoulders. The pain instantly woke the humans, who could only look around in panic as they were hauled painfully into the air by the hooks embedded in their flesh, their screams muted by the gags that were still in place.

Dawn Wings’ mind was racing. This was more elaborate than a typical Black Spiral ritual. This was…

“Welcome back, my friends.” A smooth, greasy voice proclaimed from across the room. “So glad you made it on time. I was afraid that I’d have to punish you for being late.”

Dawn Wings’ eyes immediately snapped over to the source of the new voice, her heart racing and her blood running cold. This newcomer appeared to be nothing more than a man, but his sudden appearance, and the flowing, blood-drenched ceremonial robes he wore made her terrified. Beyond his odd appearance, she could sense tremendous power coming from him, his whole body exuding Wyrm-taint like a blast furnace. This “master,” as the Black Spirals had called him, was something that she had only ever encountered once, and was something she had hoped to never meet again. A Malfean. A mage that had given himself to the Wyrm. The threat that this being posed was nearly immeasurable. On their own, mages were some of the most dangerous beings on Gaia. The ones in service to the Wyrm were even more dangerous, because they actively used their power to pervert the world and spread corruption.

“Hau menni mur av theas ryets duu yoo naed tu du bifar yoo ‘re raedy Maester?” Underbite slurred as he and his partner approached the mage, before dropping to their knees and bowing their heads.

“Two or three more. We need more pain and blood to finish corrupting the leylines around here. It shouldn’t be long till this place is ready.” The mage said smugly.

That was all she needed to hear. This needed to be stopped. Slowly backing away, Dawn Wings began to retrace her way back out, though the very act of retreating made her heart ache. As much as she disliked humans, nobody deserved to have their body, mind and soul used as fuel to power a Wyrm-rite. She had to keep reminding herself that if she tried to intervene, all she would accomplish would be getting herself killed, and leaving the mage free to continue whatever he was planning. She needed to alert the garou. They could take care of it.

Unfortunately, in her distress and haste to escape, she wasn’t as careful as she should have been. As her foot touched the stairs, she felt a surge of power. Looking down, she saw a glowing rune etched on the stair. On her way in, she hadn’t noticed them, having glided down the stairwells. She swore internally at her amateurish mistake. Almost instantly, she could feel power erupt from the chamber behind her, as well as a shout from down the corridor.

“Something tripped the wards! Get after it.”

‘Okay, cover’s blown! Screw stealth! Move your tail feathers D-Wings!’ She shouted to herself internally as she quickly spread her wings and began to fly up the stairs towards the exit.

Behind her, she could hear the sound of rapid footfalls as the fomori, Black Spirals, and Malfean rushed out after her.

*****

On a scale of one to “fuck my life,” this evening was quickly reaching the latter as far as Dawn Wings was concerned. As she flew free of the building, the mage and his cronies suddenly appeared out of nowhere directly in her path, forcing her to stall her forward momentum.

‘Dimensional translation.’ She thought. ‘fucking mages.’ Seeing her, scar-skin turned and took a quick sniff of the air. Instantly, his expression turned to rage as he pulled his lips back into a fierce scowl.

“It’s a corax!” Scar-skin snarled as he pointed directly at her, “Don’t let it get away!”

‘Figures.’ Dawn Wings thought to herself as she banked as hard as she could and tried to gain altitude quickly. Hoping to escape into the Umbra, she attempted to step sideways, but found that the instant she tried, she nearly wretched as her body was wracked with vertigo, nearly causing her to fall out of the sky.

‘Of course the mage warded the area. Why wouldn’t he?’ She thought as she pumped her wings faster, calling upon her power to augment her top flying speed. ‘Better to put some distance between me and them before they can…’

Dawn Wings thoughts were cut off as bullets tore through the air and nearly hit her. Looking back, she saw the fomori had begun to pursue her in their van, with boils and pot-belly hanging out the sides, firing automatic rifles at her. Behind them, she could see scar-skin and underbite following on a pair of motorcycles, ones that had clearly been custom built to accommodate their massive crinos forms. Dawn Wings heart sank at the sight, because that left the Malfean unaccounted for.

Almost on queue, the mage translated onto a building in front of Dawn Wings, before thrusting out his hands at her and invoking his magic. Banking as hard as she could, she felt the mystical distortion in the space she had occupied just moments before, which suddenly imploded with a deep “whump”.

‘Two points closer to F.M.L.’

Flapping hard to pour on as much speed as she could, Dawn Wings shot through the night sky, dodging bullets, all the while trying to outrun the mage, who continually got in her path and tried to annihilate her with his magick as he herded her back into range of his allies.

Dawn Wings desperately looked for a way to escape. She was a fast flier with her gift empowering her, but she didn’t have a limitless amount of stamina. Between the dodging and rapid flight, she was wearing out. If she didn’t get away soon, she knew that she’d exhaust herself completely, and then she’d be killed.

Forcing the thought away, she sped on, continuously dodging lead and mystical death. Searching her memory for anything that might give her a way out, she recalled there was a highschool a couple of miles from her position. Normally, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but there was one detail about it that could get her out of this mess: a very large mirror on the rear of the statue out front. Mirrors served as the best doorway to the Umbra, one that she hoped even the mage couldn’t completely close. It was her best shot. Dodging another blast of mystical energy, she turned sharply and sped towards what she hoped would be her salvation.

Minutes later, she landed on the roof of the building, panting for breath. Below, she could see the mirror in the moonlight. Swallowing, she took off just as the mage translated in behind her. Banking hard, she dodged another annihilation blast as she rushed towards the mirror. As she dove, she invoked one of her most powerful gifts, one that wrapped her body in a spiritual coating made to ease her passage through the gauntlet, the mystical barrier that separates the real and spirit world. Pumping her wings, she focusing her power on shifting into the umbra, using the mirror as a conduit.

‘Just a couple more feet, you can make it…’ She told herself as she could feel her body beginning to pass through the barrier into the spirit world.

“Die!” The mage snarled as he invoked his magick. Sending out a wave of dimensional disruption, he pinched space-time and causality around the corax, hoping to force reality into not recognizing her as real. Invoking this level of power greatly increased the chances of paradox, but he couldn’t afford to let the spy get away.

As the disruptive magicks struck her, Dawn Wings’ world turned inside out. Reality and time seemed to invert and explode. The barrier between the worlds distorted, extended and snapped back into place. Her gifts mingled with both the mage’s magicks and her transition into the spirit world. She felt a horrid lurching and acceleration, and then everything went black.

Translating down to the ground, the mage regarded the black char mark where his power had struck the corax. A couple of minutes later, his minions pulled up, having followed the magickal beacon he had implanted in their souls when he first bound them to his will.

“Check the other side of the gauntlet.” He said as he turned to his Black Spiral Dancer slaves. “Make sure the bird didn’t make it across.”

Bowing, the two werewolves stepped sideways into the umbra. Finding nothing, they soon returned to the material world. “There is no sign of the corax, master.” The scarred werewolf said as he and his partner bowed to their master.

“Good. But we can’t be sure if it told another of its kind about our lair. When we get back, kill the sacrifices, and move out.” He said as he began to walk towards the van. After bending reality as much as he had over the last ten minutes, he wasn’t going to risk using any more power for a while. “Pity though. All that work lost because the site was compromised.”

*Present Time*

After spending far too long simply laying on the ground going over the events of the previous few hours and focusing her spiritual energy on healing her body, Dawn Wings felt that she was recovered enough to get up and move around without feeling like she was being rolled around in red-hot broken glass.

‘Whatever that mage hit me with must have really messed up my passage. This doesn’t look anything like any part of the umbra I’ve ever visited.’ She thought to herself as she took in the room. ‘With my luck, maybe I’ve ended up in Narnia.’

Flapping her wings and taking to the air, Dawn Wings began to navigate the castle’s corridors, trying to find a way out. As she did, she noticed a few things about the labyrinth. Everything was too geometrically perfect, from the walls, to the doorways, to the dilapidated furniture.

‘Weaver site.’ She thought as she passed a perfectly organized and orderly pile of rubble and an immaculate totaled bedroom. ‘Too damn orderly not to be. Whoever built this place must’ve been an anal retentive control freak.’

Minutes passed as she flew through the corridors of the castle, always going up if she had the choice. As she emerged from another corridor, she came upon what was clearly a throne room. On one side, there were two massive chairs, one made of pure gold with an elegant sunburst above it, the other of silver with a majestic crescent moon surrounded by shimmering stars. All around the room, tapestries bearing a combined sun/moon symbol hung listlessly in the still air. Even more fantastic, this room was the apparent fulcrum of the changing colors of the stones that made up the castle, with half of the room being marble at any given time, and half being onyx, their states slowly turning counterclockwise along a central point.

As she stared at the golden throne, she was filled with a sense of awe and calm, despite the physical danger it represented to her. Taking a moment to simply bask in its presence, she realized that the throne was emanating the same spiritual power as her patron Celestine Helios. Had a servant of the Sun once occupied this throne?

Looking next to the silver throne, Dawn Wings suddenly got a sensation in her spine that made her feathers stand on end. Something about it felt wrong on a deep level. Flying up to the massive chair, she began to examine it closely. It was then that she found what was so unsettling about it. Or rather, what was on it. It was a thin coating of greasy slime. Looking around the room, she saw more of the spiritual effluence, which manifested itself when the stones changed to onyx, but vanished when they returned to marble.

Dawn Wings recoiled when she realized what the spiritual muck was. It was Wyrm-taint. Somehow, someone of great spiritual power had fallen to the Wyrm in this room, and left a scar on the spirit realm. Scrutinizing the grime with one of her gifts, Dawn Wings could pick out three specific types of contamination: Abhorra, the hate urge, Karnala, the desire urge, and Gree, the despair urge. For one being to be contaminated by not one, but three Urge-Wyrms was astounding, because it meant whoever it was had been completely consumed by all three emotions for years before succumbing.

Looking back to the golden throne, Dawn Wings suddenly had a horrid realization that the symbolism of the room was showing her. If the gold throne belonged to a spirit in service of Helios, then the silver one must belong to one that was in the service of his sister, Luna. Through it was practically unheard of, it was possible for any spirit to fall to the Wyrm, even one in the employ of a Celestine. Was that the reason this building was abandoned? Had the sun-spirit been driven away by a Wyrm-tainted former moon-spirit. Shuddering, Dawn Wings hoped that whoever this treacherous moon-spirit was, they had been put down, and put down hard.

Deciding that it was time to make her exit, Dawn Wings sped out of the room. It took another ten minutes or so of flying through the building before she finally found an opening in the roof. Landing on one of the buttresses of what she now could see was a castle, the corax took in the surrounding scenery.

‘Toto, I don’t think we’re in California anymore.’ She thought to herself. For one, there were no castles in Los Angeles, outside the magical hell that was the Disneyland amusement park. And she’d seen the umbral representation of that madhouse before. It wasn’t something she’d ever forget, despite how much she would like to.

Then there was the massive forest surrounding the castle. Not something one would find in the middle of a large arid basin that had been developed into a concrete wasteland.

The state of the forest intrigued her greatly. Unlike the castle, which was strongly aligned with the Weaver, the forest below was more in touch with the Wyld. Chaotic, disordered and untamed, the woods were a place where the hand of order had very little sway, which was something she took great comfort in, as it was similar to the Umbral forest of her home in the Sierra Nevada.

Spreading her wings, Dawn Wings took to the sky, gliding out over the woodland. Even under the current circumstances, she was tempted to start exploring this new umbral landscape, but she forced herself to put the idea aside. First she’d need to get her bearings. Then she’d have to report what she found to her allies. Then she could explore. With one final glance at the wilderness below her, she attempted to step sideways out of the umbra and back into the material world. To her surprise, she found the gauntlet remarkably thin.

‘Huh, not usually that easy to get across.’ She thought to herself as she emerged into the physical world. Noting that it was still the dead of night, she had to wonder just how long she’d been out. Was she even still in the same time zone?

Then there was the moon, which was a bit brighter than she remembered it. ‘Probably just the lack of light pollution.’ She thought as be began surveying the landscape around her. As she scanned the horizon, she managed to barely pick out the signs of a large town off in the distance.

‘Town means people. People means infrastructure. Infrastructure means I can figure out where in Raven’s name I am, and maybe get an email off to Cackling Mesa, or Bright-claw.’ She thought as she turned towards the town with a flap of her wings.

As she passed over the forest, she noticed that it gradually began to give way to a massive orchard. Acres upon acres of orderly trees stretched out below her. Flying low, she saw that they were apples. As she looked over the groves, her stomach gave a sharp pang of hunger. Figuring that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she ate something and waited till morning to get her bearings, she banked down and landed in one of the trees. Moving along the branch, she pecked at one of the apples for a few minutes, letting the sweet and sour fruit take the edge off stomach. After following it up by prying a few sleeping insects out of the bark, Dawn Wings settled in and let herself begin to drift off.

‘First thing I’m doing in the morning is getting to a computer and sending word to Bright-claw about that mage. I hope her pack makes him die painfully when they get their fangs on him. Maybe they’ll yank his intestines out through his ass and strangle him with ‘em.’ And with that pleasant thought in her head, Dawn Wings closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note

The prologue of this story is going to be one of the most overtly gory for some time. If you're unfamiliar with the source material, just know that this chapter is relatively tame for the setting.

Terms (Links to the White Wolf Wiki will be provided when deemed necessary)

• Leech - derogatory fera term for Cainite Vampire
• Kuei-jin - East Asian vampires, and unrelated to the western Cainite vampires (see above).
• Camarilla - One of the major vampire powers. Slightly less dangerous to mortals than their ideological enemies, the Sabbat.
• Fomori - Humans possessed and mutated by a malevolent spirit known as a bane.
• Wyrm - one of the primal forces of existence, the Wyrm once embodied destruction and renewal, but thanks to the actions of the Weaver, has been transformed into corruption.
• Pentex - A multi-national corporation fully in the thrall of the Wyrm.
• Black Spiral Dancers - A tribe of garou (werewolves) that have fallen as a whole to the Wyrm.
• Mage - A human that has awoken to the power of magic.
• Malfean - A corrupt mage that serves the wyrm.
• Umbra - the spirit world
• Stepping sideways - the fera ability to pass between the physical world and the umbra.
• Weaver - primordial spirit of order. Insane and responsible for causing the Wyrm's current entrapment.
• Wyld - primal spirit of chaos and creation. The least malicious member of the Triat.