Sept of the Hungry Wolf[edit | edit source]
This story is true.
Crucible dreams of red gristle and heart’s blood. She tastes the pulse of pounding Rage under her tongue after every scared hunt. As her crimson claws split Wyrm spirits from stomach to groin, as her viscera stained teeth freed arteries from their meat suits, as her full moon wrath screamed victory to the earth mother, Father Fenris is not satisfied. And Crucible says nothing, because good daughters do not look their fathers in the face and call them unjustified. Crucible should have been a worse daughter.
The den is a coffin. Crucible wakes without air. Her eyes weep. Her nose knows nothing but the acrid menace in the air. The smoke is sinister enough to choke like a spirit teaching you to breathe with purpose. She stands, paws like a newborn, and howls with all the breath she has. She’ll soon learn what a waste that was. Another Garou, Tongue-of-Fire, pushes her low. After all, even the most horrible smoke rises. Tongue-of-Fire tells her they’re going out the back. Crucible casts her eyes to where the smoke is pouring from. She opens her mouth. He snarls. Crucible has never won an argument with him when his words turn to snarls. The Rage under her skin sings of slaughter. It sings of dead spirits and the death of the Wyrm. It sings so sweetly that she wants to fall into her crinos form like a lover. Tongue-of-Fire runs. Others follow. Crucible runs with her elders through the back tunnel, trying not to breathe in the Rage or malice. It takes five minutes for them to leave behind their burning sanctum and run into the arms of slaughter. Tongue-of-Fire is struck so hard by a swinging claw that it carves through his chest and exposes his heart. He shifts in an instant, flesh mending, bones extending, and rips out the throat of Silver Eye—his brother-in-arms. His would-be killer. Their brothers are their murderers. Crucible thought she and death were intimate: the kind of allies comfortable in each other’s beds. As she sees the crunch of a one-time lover’s ribcage between the teeth of a three time sister-in-arms, she realizes that death cares not if she wakes to an embrace. Crucible’s eye is inches from a slavering maw. She is invited to partake in the supremacy of her betters. Crucible bites out a tendon and lives to tell the tale. There is nothing but ash and the smell of Garou blood when the killing ends. Tongue-of-Fire lies headless, wolf body inches from Crucible. Father Fenris howls and howls and howls. Her father is not satisfied and Crucible cannot bring herself to howl with him. She runs and knows Fenris will never forgive her surrender.
One year later, Crucible’s body burns as the marks of her father are flayed from her flesh. She knows Rat will never be the father Fenris was, and she will never know whether to celebrate that fact. Rat doesn’t ask for her to be his daughter.