Private Tales Sanguis Crassior

[Fallon]

The pain was immediate, searing, and absolute. Fallon’s senses ignited in revolt against her body. It wasn’t just a wound- it was an invasion. Silver had torn through flesh and bone like molten fire, and every beat of her heart pushed that fire through her veins, igniting nerves, muscles, organs, every fragile part of her that she had ever thought indestructible.

It felt as though her blood itself had turned to acid, boiling from the inside, eating along every artery and vein. Every inhalation drew pain deeper into her lungs, every exhale was a scream trapped in her throat. She arched and writhed, unable to control herself as her body shifted back violently, as if the agony had claimed her body entirely.

Her inherent Garou resilience offered her no reprieve. Steel she had faced a hundred times, blades, arrows, claws, fangs, but none had ever burned like this. Silver was alive, sentient, whispering in the language of destruction through every fiber of her being. The world fractured around her, snow turning to fire, the cold night air biting only at the edges of her awareness.

Her limbs betrayed her, legs buckling beneath her. She rolled in the snow, thrashing, leaving a trail of crimson as her teeth ground against the pain that refused to relent. Every nerve screamed, every heartbeat a hammer blow, every pulse of her poisoned blood a promise of obliteration.

She tasted her own blood, though it tasted of silver, acrid and metallic, and it burned like acid on her tongue. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think beyond the single, consuming truth. This was death, this was fire, this was agony incarnate, and it would not stop until she was nothing but ash.

Victoria. She heard her yelling. There was a flurry of motion around her but her world was spinning.

"Vi... run.." she quietly begged, wanting her wife safe when she could not be there beside her. Tears rolled freely down her cheeks as darkness dragged her under.

Caspian’s breath steamed in the cold, his broad chest heaving as he stood over Fallon. The rock he had struck her with tumbled from his hand, rolling across the snow like something shameful. Blood streaked his bronze skin and golden hair, matted against his temples, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth might break. Across his naked skin the wounds he had borne in the fight already knitted themselves shut, slashes knitting to angry red seams, punctures shrinking to nothing. Even the deep gouge on his ribs faded, muscle writhing beneath as it pulled itself back together.

“Get the wounded back to the Caern,” he barked, his voice hoarse with command. Garou obeyed without hesitation, dragging bodies, living and dead, out of the slaughter ground. Then he crouched, great hands sliding beneath Fallon’s limp, shuddering form to lift her against his chest.

But Fallon was slipping. Her body convulsed, but her mind was already being pulled away. The silver fire still burned inside her veins, but the world around her grew quiet, smothered. The forest bled of colour until it was nothing but shades of ash, the towering trees skeletal, the snow dull grey beneath her knees. The battlefield, the wolves, even Victoria, gone.

She was alone. She was in the umbra. The in between..

Her throat tore with a scream, her wife’s name hurled into the endless silence. The sound echoed back at her, hollow, breaking, until her voice failed and she collapsed forward. Hands and knees sank into the snow, sobs wracking her chest as her tears fell into the frost. She pressed her face into the snow, unable to feel its chill, her whole body bowing with grief.

A hand settled lightly on her shoulder. Cold. Ethereal. She froze, her breath catching, before she dared to lift her face.

“Fallon…”

Her voice. Not Victoria's, but another who lived in her memory.

Fallon’s body shuddered with another raw sob, her fingers clawing at the snow to hold on to something. “I’m not ready to die, Livvy,” she whispered.

 

[Victoria O'Connor]

Victoria had all but forgotten the battle. The garou had won... for now. The vampires that had not been subdued slunk back into the shadows, wolf teeth nipping at their heels. The broken bodies of the others would begin to stir soon, at least one seeking out its own head in the freezing winds. Though there were more than a few that remained motionless despite there being no sunlight, nor wooden stakes through their hearts, nor other interventions that could kill them. Had Victoria noticed this, she would have felt a new terror: a chilling confirmation that these garou could kill her... though she knew not how.

Alas, Victoria did not notice this. She was fully consumed by Fallon's suffering. Her own body wanted to writhe in mirror of her wife, and even her cold strength could not keep the silver wolf's form still. Fallon smelled different, her blood smelled wrong. It sounded strained moving through her veins, dragging decaying cells and micro-clots along spasming vessels. Her heartbeat was irregular. All of Victoria's unnatural senses told her what her mind could not acknowledge. Fallon was dying.

Victoria's distress was palpable. If any of the pack had remaining doubts about her capacity for emotion, they were satisfied here. The vampire's wails bordered on indecency, crying frozen tears over her love's pallid face. When Caspian reached to carry her body, Victoria reeled at him, hissing, clutching to Fallon's shoulders. For a moment her face bore nothing but the hard lines of a truly feral creature. The pack recoiled, but Caspian did not waver. Though he did not move to lift Fallon, he looked at Victoria without a trace of fear. His eyes held a coldness that was unlike that behind the vampire's eyes, a living ice, volatile. Victoria's face softened beneath it, but she didn't retreat.

"I will not leave her."

Whether it was understanding, exhaustion, or just avoiding another fight, Caspian said nothing, and allowed Victoria to lift her wife's limp body from the ground. She carried Fallon with ease, her slender frame unnaturally strong. She clung to the warmth that still radiated from Fallon, trying to ignore how quickly it seemed to be cooling. As long as she could feel Fallon's heart beating there was a chance.

"Sever one of their heads and blindfold it. Stuff the neck with fresh earth, ideally from just beneath a tree. Drag it through the first stream we come across, that will keep the body from finding it... for a time. When it wakes up, I have questions for it."

She broke into a run, surrounded on all sides by wolves, following them at fever-pace to where she hoped Fallon could be saved.

 

[Fallon]

Other fallen wolves were gathered up, limp and wounded bodies draped across broad shoulders. Caspian and Serra exchanged a look, something caught between dubiety and disgust when Victoria gave her sharp, clinical instructions on how to keep a vampire’s body from finding its head. Caspian’s lip curled faintly, but he gave a short nod to one of the younger wolves.

“Do as she says,” he ordered curtly. Then, turning to the others, he growled, “Burn the rest.”

His chest still seeped blood from where claws had raked across his chest, his arm bitten in multiple places, but even as he spoke, the flesh was knitting over again. He drew a deep breath, shifted in a smooth, liquid ripple of muscle and bone, and a moment later a great blond wolf loped alongside Victoria, leading them up the mountain.

The climb to the Caern was treacherous to those who did not know it well. Scree slid under their paws and feet, the air growing thinner, colder, the wind howling through the peaks like a mourning wraith. The wolves moved like ghosts, sure-footed and silent despite the incline, until finally the black maw of the Caern opened before them.

Inside, warmth. The cavern was lit by fire pits, the air hazy with woodsmoke and steam rising from the hot springs that pooled in the rock. It was wild and untamed and unmistakably theirs.

“Vassa!” Caspian’s voice thundered off the walls as he shifted back, grabbing a cloth to wrap around himself.

A woman came running, her red hair braided and her skin painted with white spirals that glowed faintly in the firelight, the marks of a den-mother and healer. She stopped short when her eyes fell on Victoria, a flicker of confusion and fear crossing her face. Behind her, two young women scooped up small children and pulled them away from the sight of the vampire standing in their sacred space.

“What is—” she started, but her eyes caught Fallon’s limp form, and all other thoughts fled.

“Fallon…” Vassa breathed, paling. She glanced once at Caspian, then at the vampire who carried her. “Bring her here.” She gestured urgently toward the back of the cavern where flat furs and woven mats had been laid out.
Vassa was already moving, gathering stone bowls, jars, and bundles of herbs from shelves set into the walls. She knelt beside Fallon, sniffing once, her face hardening.

“Silver,” she muttered under her breath, and began unpacking her tools.

A shallow stone bowl was filled with hot spring water, into which she crushed dried yarrow and a sharp-smelling resin, the water taking on a strange, green-gold hue. She pressed her fingers to Fallon’s throat, then her sternum, muttering under her breath. The white spirals painted on her arms flared softly in response.

“She has to bleed,” Vassa said, not to Victoria but to Caspian, “The silver must come out.”

She drew a narrow bone blade from her belt — white as ivory and carved with runes. “Hold her,” she instructed, though Fallon barely moved now except for the shallow rise and fall of her sweat-dusted chest.

Vassa sliced Fallon’s arm in a long, clean line, not deep enough to maim but enough to let the poisoned blood run. The smell was acrid, wrong, a metallic scent that burned in the nose. The blood that oozed was thick, blackened in places where the silver had seared it. Vassa caught it in the stone bowl and worked quickly, reopening other veins when the first slowed, working her way down Fallon’s arms and legs.

Between cuts she smeared thick salves onto the wounds, pungent with garlic, witch hazel, and some sharp mountain flower, forcing them to stay open and bleed faster instead of closing too soon. Her chanting grew louder, faster, until the air itself seemed to hum in answer. The firepits popped and flared as though feeding her magic.

When the worst of the black blood was gone, she mixed more herbs into the bowl and washed the wounds clean with the green-gold water, rubbing it into Fallon’s skin until the runes carved into her bone knife gleamed.

Only then did she finally press a poultice over the slices and bind them with linen, letting her touch linger on Fallon’s heart, whispering one last word that sent a ripple of power through the den.

“She is lost to the umbra, for now... But she will live,” Vassa said at last, her voice quieter, strained. “If the silver does not reach her heart again.”

Her eyes flicked to Victoria, something unreadable passing over her face, before she turned to see to the others.