The Elder's Tale of Moons and Wolves
The subterranean caverns of the city went deep - so deep that sometimes, Dorian almost felt the Street's tug, as if recalling him - and stretched wide, a colossal system like forks of lightning. They explored without the use of a map, with only Andrei's memories to store the line of their path, and Fulminance-operated flashlights to see with.
From time to time, they encountered ruined systems: some remnants of an ancient history, such as heavy stone doors with pistons that required a Murkworker to finesse, creating steam out of containers of stale water, pushing the pistons - and thereby doors - up into the ceiling. The industrial revolution was a recent memory but it didn't take a commercial tycoon to invent a system in which steam created pressure, resulting in force. With his mind's recent shattering, Dorian considered this strangely imaginative instead; an opinion he was certain he wouldn't have held before.
After entering a vast, cavernous chamber studded with columns, stalactites, and flowstone, something odd became apparent. Within the depths, a sound of footsteps and rocks banging together, with almost too much precise irregularity to be fully natural.
"Can you hear that?" asked Dorian, in a hushed whisper.
"Yes," whispered back the doctor. "I can."
Abruptly, the sound stopped, and a hoary voice came from the distant darkness ahead. "Who goes there?"
They shared a brief look, and Andrei answered with a low word: "Explorers."
"Explorers," the voice repeated verbatim, as if nibbling on the term. Its response was fraught with disbelief, faintly amused, "All the way down here? You must be lying to me. What, is the apocalypse on the surface over? It certainly doesn't feel that way to me. I can feel the moonlight even down here, as if... as if it were calling to me."
"Who are you?"
The man's voice sounded despondent, as if suddenly drained of vigor. Filled with regret, and more than a little bitterness.
"Elder Leverett Saltonsnarl, at your service... child."
To that, Andrei reacted with faint surprise. "Honored Elder, we didn't know there were-"
"No, no," the voice interrupted Andrei with a distant grumble, a growl of annoyance, as if rethinking the term. "Nevermind that. Don't call me Elder. It's such a worthless title. Most of the Elders are up on the surface, running amok like wild animals. The Federation is... gone. Our Tribes are gone. The old ways are gone. Just Leverett, now. Will you come over here so I can have a look at you? Just don't shine those flashlights in my face, please - my eyes are very sensitive."
"Are you sure you can control yourself?" asked Andrei with an apparent worry creasing his face all of a sudden. Given he'd never asked much on how lycanthropy works, aside from the obvious, Dorian was content to let the doctor steer this conversation.
"Oh child... The Moon shattered on that terrible day, that much is true, yes," Leverett said from the darkness, voice carried over the stones and rocks. "But I was not acknowledged as a Tribal Elder for collecting daisies and wildflowers. If I could not control the gift within, I'd not be speaking with you right now. I am confident in my assessment. Now come here and have coffee with me. It is rude to speak without facing each other. You children and your newfangled landlines and Fulmi-whatsits..."
Leverett's voice dissipated into a mutter, a litany of quietly uttered complaints.
It might've been what tattered scraps remained of Dorian's imagination, but he sounded almost nostalgic, rather than upset.
Andrei nodded, and stepped forward, flashlight lowered minimally to avoid blinding the man who sat deeper in the cave. Dorian followed his companion's footsteps, almost skittish at the idea of entering the same space as an elder werewolf - no matter his insistence on being in control.
With the darkness obscuring his silhouette, it was difficult to perceive Leverett. What Dorian did see didn't paint a pretty image. He was an elderly man, about late seventies. He sported an ungroomed white beard, like a prickly artist's brush extending down to the navel. His eyes were a vibrant yellow-orange and slitted, as if carrying the promise of wild mysteries - even so, they bore a clear intellect the werewolves above the surface didn't. It was clear he was partially transformed into a werewolf: entire body covered in a thin mask of stringy hair. He was also covered in grime and dirt. A loincloth made from the frayed remnants of what might've once been a dress shirt preserved modesty.
"Hello there," said Leverett, raising a hand in a dejected wave. "It's hard to count the exact time - my pocket watch broke down a while ago - but it's been at least a week since I've met anyone. Longer. I always find out later, it's been longer than I tend to assume."
"Why are you down here, sir?" asked Andrei, scanning the cave's contours with movements of the flashlight. There were some assorted living items and furniture: pots and pans, a pile of charcoal that burned out a long time ago. The mangled frame of what might've been a lawn chair.
"Oh, I was down here when the world ended - an expedition to meet with the deep folk, part of my diplomatic duties. It's easier down here to control the gift. Without the moonlight in sight, I mean," Leverett said with a lamenting voice. "It helps me forget, too."
Dorian asked, "You still call it a gift, despite it maiming your mind? Turning your friends into beasts?"
Leverett coughed, a sickly sound. Bronchitis? His lycanthropic endurance was a clear explanation why he'd not succumbed. While it'd have been nice to help the man, Dorian wasn't certain he could muster the instinctive, Visceral compassion to manage doing so: unless fueled by emotion, his healing of others was practically borderline nonexistent.
"Yes. Even monstrous, a gift is a gift," Leverett answered. "And no gift is without strings, and no power without its price. Forgive me saying so, child, but you carry the scent of someone who's recently learned the same lesson."
Dorian frowned a little, curious if the man's phrasing was a metaphor - or if he could literally smell the emotion of regret. If so, Dorian pitied the man for wielding such a terrible form of perception.
"It's not your scent." As if a mind-reader, Leverett shook his head at Dorian's thoughts. "You carry yourself like a man full of broken ambition. Both of you do, if I'm frank. Not that I am surprised, mind you. The world is cursed to shit. If only we could build another one of those rockets, eh?" The man laughed darkly, interspersed with coughs.
"What happened to the rest of the expedition?" asked Dorian.
Leverett waved a hand, dismissive. "Oh, they scattered. A couple of them went to the surface to aid the military, very early on," said Leverett, eyes raised in reminiscence, as if reliving it. "And most of the others died over the long vigil of months. I am a lycanthrope, I can subsist on vermin, if need be. They were not so gifted, and I could not share the gift with them: not when the risk of ferality was this severe. A few of them asked me to put them out of their misery with the claws... I was hesitant, but I obliged. There are a couple of them around, still. Living among the deep folk. I am not welcome there. They fear me. I cannot blame them for that, so I steer clear of them when I can."
"We've some supplies we could share with you," Andrei offered. "Although we cannot stay more than a couple of hours."
With some creative Fulminance and kindling, Andrei started a fire on the man's former pile. The yellow eyes glittered as they reflected the brightness of the flame. Leverett brought over a stockpile of coffee rations he'd kept around for a time of need, and soon, each of the three of them had a mug of their own brew. It tasted like heated dirty water, but Dorian's etiquette kicked in like a mule, and he made no rude comments. Instead, Dorian and Andrei shared their names, and stories of the Street with the elder.
"Fascinating. I did think I smelled the incarnadine craft in you," said Leverett, looking at Dorian. "I didn't wish to comment on the matter. It'd be rude. You're not a vampire, and what business of mine would it even be? The Cold War's dissolved like a drop of blood in the vast sea of cosmic indifference. Like the rest of the world. Gods, what were we thinking... sending lycanthropes to Luna. Just to win a contest? It's no wonder the Moonwolf decided to punish us so." Leverett shook his head, while Andrei frowned.
"'Moonwolf?'" asked the doctor, as if new to the term. Dorian was equally confused.
"Oh? You don't know?" asked Leverett. His eyes shone with surprise. He looked from Dorian to Andrei and back, as if confirming he wasn't being made into a fool. "Incredible. Did the word truly not circulate around? But even if so, you'd have seen on your telescopes when Diana 11 settled down on the Moon's surface. And if you didn't, surely someone who did would've alerted you to this?"
"I was not..." The doctor shook his head, and retried: "No, sir. At the moment of the landing, I was preoccupied with other matters, which I considered more imperative to pursue than celebrating our cultural victory. And I never heard of anything about this from my astronomically-minded colleagues. Actually, now that I remember, I don't even think Demimonde's and the Moon's relative positions would've allowed direct observation of the landing site from the eastern seaboard. Most of the moonrock scattered over Europe and Africa directly, and only circled around to cover the rest."
"Didn't you help work on Diana 11?" cut in Dorian, remembering Henry mention something like that.
"Yes. I helped with the trajectorial calculations," said Musorov with an annoyed snort. "But, as I'm sure you already know, I had other research to attend to. Even if I were interested, I would not be able to make observation of the landing from where I'd been."
Mentalism. His studies of the mental state of asylum patients, among other things.
Dorian nodded. "Yes. In that case, it makes sense."
Leverett agreed, "Hah, is that so? It's no wonder then... Let me ask you this, then. What do you think caused the Moon to shatter as it did?"
"Isn't it obvious, sir? One of the astronauts must've lost control over their gift," answered Andrei, after a moment of thinking on the matter. "The density and proximity of moonrock must've set something off within them, and also increased the potence of his shape. And the Moon exploded."
"No, boy!" Leverett groused. "You think the gift's so powerful it can make one common therianthrope into a world-shattering monster? Besides, how would a transformation on the Moon's surface cause it to break apart from within so explosively as to scatter shards into Demimonde's atmosphere? And if the Moon's power caused the transformation, don't you think it would've happened over time as Diana 11 approached? Cooking the astronauts inside into bigger and bigger beasts, until they harmlessly settled down on the surface? But that didn't happen. It happened after they set paw on the surface. Suddenly. You're a scientist. Think about this for a second."
"Yes... I can see the obvious contradictions in what you're saying," Andrei admitted with a slow nod. "With the parameters as they are, the shattering doesn't make sense. I've thought about this as well. But how else do you explain it? There is nothing else that can."
"The Moonwolf, boy," said Leverett, stressing the word. "We all felt it... we Elders, I mean. Even before Diana 11. There are records stretching back as far as centuries. It's the reason for the entire damn program. We hoped to free the damn thing from its shackles. Kenesky and his damn cabinet..."
Thrice, he damned these things. Bitterness revealed itself, fangs showing in an almost-snarling mouth.
"What do you mean?" asked Dorian.
"The Moon's a prison, boys. The universe's biggest prison for its biggest wolf," explained Leverett slowly. "Or was, rather. For centuries, we felt the gift in our blood answering whatever beast was hiding inside. Asking to be awakened, to be freed. When our astronauts set down, we all felt it... all the damn wolves on the planet felt it, I imagine. The howl. The rage. The hunger waking up. A beast the size of a continent waking up inside its prison and throwing its maw open and howling. That's what shattered the Moon."
"Well, if that's the case, then where is it?" asked Musorov, alarmed all of a sudden. "Where did this supposed Moonwolf go off to? If it's that large and powerful, it couldn't have disappeared into thin air, could it have?"
"Well, it did," said Leverett, shoulders drooping, as if with a mixture of tiredness and cold disappointment. "Our promised salvation proved to be our civilization's undoing... and then, released of its shackles, it disappeared into the wild yonder. It left us behind. Punished our presumption and... went away."
"You ascribe too much intent to what must've been a wild, unimaginative beast," Dorian argued.
"Wild, yes... Unimaginative, no." Leverett shook his head. "Regardless, it left Demimonde to its fate. If your stories of this 'Street' are true, and there are other worlds, maybe it went back to its ancestral home. Or maybe it's traveling the worlds as the ultimate predator."
Given Leverett's somber attitude, Dorian and Andrei said some final words, and then finally excused themselves. The Street's call was firm now, a quiet song rising into an anthem of finality - a demand, rather than a request. Come back now, or don't bother returning to me.
"Do you think it's true?" asked Dorian, as they clambered out of the waterworks underneath Dewmoor's Waterside.
"The story about the giant wolf? Maybe," answered Andrei with a deep-set frown, clearly at least somewhat bothered such information had passed him over. "If your Street takes me along, I suppose we might find out one day."
Coming across a giant, bloodthirsty Moonwolf didn't strike Dorian as an encounter he'd be able to - currently - survive.
"Let's hope it won't be too soon."
They stepped onto a street where one opalescent cobblestone shimmered. It swallowed them without even a flash of light. Demimonde was left behind. A shattered Moon shone overhead, hollowed out from within.
---
Your Street Attunement has increased - now Level 4.
*Average time on a world: circa 2-4 weeks, leaning towards a month.
*Average world desireability has increased slightly.
*You now have the ability to make minor requests of the Street from time to time.
*Occurrence rate of positively-aligned wayfarer encounters will increase; hostile wayfarer occurrence rate unchanged.
*Ability to predict incoming worlds has improved.
Furthermore, you've succeeded in taking Dr. Andrei Musorov with you as a traveling companion.
For a moment, the Street favors you with its song. Choose one Street Boon:
[ ] Resting Place - Your expedition shall be interrupted with a one-time stop at a restful location, for which the Street will allow you to remain for a single night and a day. This can be a tavern, a high-class hotel, or something of a similar nature. It'll be two full steps of desireability above your current norm. Assured to be safe, assured to have amenities (at least some of which you can take with you.) It'll be almost useless for training or research, but it'll help you recover from the trials you've faced so far quickly.
[ ] World-Wish - Instead of a random selection, you can instead select up to a couple of parameters you'd like your next major world to have. These are up to player specification and can be moderately broad. The more traits you stack, the higher the odds of a critical failure or a world that meets your desires on a technicality, but is otherwise horrible. As an example: 'a world where we can freely pick up a helpful magic,' or 'one where the Street will let us stay a bit longer.' No specifics; you can ask for 'a world with a system of cultivation,' but not 'Shi Lei's exact homeworld.' Expect disappointment if you stack too many specifics.
[ ] Fellow Traveler - You encounter a fellow Streetwalker. They might be inhuman or hostile, but if this is the case, their power level won't be even as high as yours; an encounter you'll either win or survive with confident odds. A fifty-fifty shot of either a random encounter with someone you don't know, or it being someone from the list of named wayfarers that Shi Lei shared with you.
