This is a story that I wrote for an assignment last semester. It deals with a table-top game called Werewolf: The Forsaken, published by White Wolf Publishing. If you'd like to know more about it, I'd suggest going to www.white-wolf.com and looking it and the other World of Darkness Supernaturals for a hint. For now... Enjoy ^^

Contemplating One's Self
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The claws pierced his skin, causing blood to run down his clothes. They could be considered claws, but they were miss-matched patches of metal and glass. Pain roared up his arm where the creature had attacked, and the man gritted his fang-like teeth.

The beast, if it could even be an animal, appeared to be a mass of bits of metal, glass, and concrete. A head-like structure was lined with jagged pieces of glass and rebar rods made empty eye sockets. It was a monster, an abomination, a combination of two spirits that shouldn’t be together.

The opponent was human, mostly. He wore a tan trench coat with black pants. Long black hair was tied back into a tail, and green eyes stared in pain and defiance. There were differences that made him seem inhuman. Fur grew from the sides of his jaw, his nose was angular and elongated, and his fingernails were more like claws.

Vincent Nelson stepped back after the Magath’s last attack. He looked at the gash in his trench coat and the blood that trickled down his arm. He glared at the Magath that towered over him, and he could hear it laughing.

“Uratha not as strong as say,” it muttered in the First Tongue, the language of spirits. “Kill you make me feared by others.”

Vincent flexed his arm. “You’ve caused too much trouble for me to leave you, abomination.” he replied in the First Tongue as well. Essence flowed from inside his body and repaired the damage the twisted spirit had caused, his arm no longer injured. Reaching inside his coat he took two octagonal sai from their holders and rushed the Magath.

Tan clothes molded into white fur, muscles bulged and grew, the sai turned into giant swords, and Vincent’s eyes turned from green to golden yellow. Where a human once stood was now a nine-foot tall snarling death beast, a Werewolf.

In an instant it was over. The spirit lay on the ground dead and its body beginning to discorporate. Vincent sheathed his sai after using the Fetish he created out of them to slice the Magath in half. He turned to make sure the spirit was discorporated and then turned to walk away.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Stopping he sat down on a protrusion of twisted concrete and inhaled the smoke. Vincent watched the spirit world of Denver, Colorado. The world has always had two sides. First the Physical world, where reality existed, and changed the Shadow Realm. Then the Spiritual, the Hisil, where spirits were born from the physical, and influenced change in it as well.

It never ceased to amaze him how much influence the physical has over the spirit. He stared across the horizon, and watching how the skyscrapers of Denver resembled towers of depression and torture. The road snaked its way as car spirits hunted along those tracks. The world seemed almost post-apocalyptic, and yet Vincent knew it was whole. Spirits and humans were very much alike. Both wanted power and strength, and both had the few that would make trouble fulfilling their own desires. Vincent knew both were necessary for balance, and both tried to influence the other.

He inhaled the last drag of his cigarette and stood up. His trench coat would need to be repaired again, along with all the other tears and rips he acquired on this excursion. How long had he been in the Shadow Realm: 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months? He wasn’t sure any more. He didn’t forget the reason he was here however.

Vincent took another look at the spiritual horizon before he started walking again.

“So Urafarah is taking a stroll through the Shadow. How quaint.” said a squawking voice. Vincent stopped and scowled, a groan escaped his mouth.

“Stop referring to me as Father Wolf. I am not the Wolf God no more than you are a real crow,” slowly, Vincent turned to face the crow standing where he was sitting.

“Come now Truthstalker. You surely don’t deny the dreams and visions of your brethren?” The crow cocked its head as it looked at him. Bits of flesh hung from its form, patches of feathers were in clumps, and bones could be seen under areas of missing muscle.

“Dreams aside, sharatha,” Vincent replied. “Father Wolf has been dead for eons. And even if he did reform, he would reform as a spirit, not as one of his own children.”

“Ahh, and there is where you miss the power of the Shadow,” the crow mocked at him.

“Really? Then let’s go over what the relationship is between the world and its shadow then.” Vincent said lighting another cigarette.

“The world has two sides, the physical world, and the Shadow World. Both have and hold influence over the other, a connection that is difficult to grasp by others. Spirits are brought about by the objects that gave them meaning, as well as the emotions tied to those objects. All animals besides humans have spirits, and humans created a different breed of spirit, conceptual.”

“What you say is true.” The crow stated while it cleaned itself under a wing. “And what of the Spiritual on the Physical?”

“The same type of relationship exists. If a spirit wishes change in the physical, it creates its resonance in an area until humans are compelled to alter it, strengthening the spirit and its purpose.”

“Yes yes,” the crow squawked again. “However you Uratha take a simple fact for granted. You are half flesh as well as half spirit. The changes that happen in the physical world affect you as well, although your kind thinks itself immune.” It hopped down along the ground, using the beak to scratch at the ground.

Vincent shook his head. “We are not immune. We are the only thing that seems to stop the spirits from taking both sides of the Gauntlet. And they fight us every step of the way.”

“Do you know why there is a spirit and a physical side to the world?” the crow asked while it started to clean under its right wing.

“Why?” Vincent held his chin and thought. “Why is a good question. If you look at nature, everything has an opposite. Males and Females, good and evil, the mind and the body, and logic and emotion. The Hisil is just the second half of the earth and those that exsist in the physical world. It obeys the same physical laws and predation that the physical world is subscribed to.”

“So then, why would there be need for your kind if the two are halves of the same thing?” Dancing along the Crow cocked its head in anticipation of the answer.

Vincent took out and lit another cigarette. “There are those who wish for that which they don’t have. Greed, pride, Envy, the vices that are the evils of the world that brought the Maeijin into being drive everyone to some small degree cause people and spirits to seek power and riches. In such cases it is never enough. Father Wolf protected the Boarder Marshes so that either side would not wish for the power of the other.”

“Then where did Father Wolf come from, if he was to watch over both worlds?”

Vincent thought for a moment before answering. “I don’t know.”

“What?” the crow looked shocked and taken aback. “You mean Truthstalker doesn’t know something?”

“I don’t’ know everything. You should know that.”

“What do you know then?”

“I’ve heard too many blasphemies to the contrary. I know that however the world was created, the spirit and the physical, which we are here now. There are things out there that I don’t know about. The world isn’t cut and dry as everyone thinks. My eyes are alert and my mind is open. I won’t deny that the connection that the spirits share with the physical and werewolves are the key to the connection.”

“Ahh, but what a connection? Is there one?”

“Possibly, but that’s not my priority right now.” Vincent exhaled a large cloud of smoke. “We are here, and whether we be spirit, flesh or a combination of the two doesn’t change that fact. And despite what the spirits and the prophets keep seeing or saying. I am not Father Wolf Reborn, I am no stronger than any other Werewolf.”

“Yes. You don’t give yourself enough credit. When a Spirit loses all essence or its form is torn asunder you know that it does not die. It will reform at the place that generates its own resonance. Urafarah’s resonance is that of the wolf, of the guardian, of the warrior, of the dreamer, of the shaman, and of the stalker. The Uratha are the resonance of Father Wolf and you are what was chosen to be his spirits keeper. Do you think that you’ve managed to live this long and become this powerful in such a short amount of time based on luck and sheer will?” The crow laughed. “Your success comes from Urafarah’s power coursing through you. Your soul is his soul, and the same for it. You ARE the one and the same, whether you choose to believe it or not, Truthstalker.” A breeze started to pick up and soon turned into a gale wind that made Vincent force himself to keep on his feet. He raised his arm to protect his eyes from wandering projectiles. “You may deny to yourself what you are even though you accept yourself from what you think you are.” The crow’s voice began to become distant and yet close, as if the wind itself was carrying the words and magnifying them. “A paradox that you might find your end at, whatever path you choose.”

The wind died down and Vincent looked around him. The zombie crow was gone, yet the words still echoed in his mind.

“Damn Host doesn’t know when to shut up.” He snarled as he inhaled on the cigarette in his mouth. Smoke flew out as he sighed. “Still,” he said. “As much as I may deny it, I know Urafarah has returned. And I also know that my death will bring him back to power.”

He turned around to continue on his way and found himself surrounded by a pack of spirit dogs. Mongrels whose heads seemed to split into three different set of jaws with jagged canines and carnassial teeth. They were four feet tall at the shoulder, multiple tongues and drool dripped from their disfigured mouths.

“Forgive my intrusion Iurhir,” he said in the First Tongue. “I mean no danger to you or your territory.”

The largest spirit of the pack stepped forward and spoke from its grotesque mouth. “Uratha is an intruder. Uratha disrupts our order. Uratha will die for betrayal.”

As one the spirit dogs began to circle Vincent. He stood there knowing that they would attack and try to kill him.

A smirk split his face. “Heh, the sharatha may think that Urafarah is giving me his own power. But I’ve gained my power on my own, through my own blood and effort.” Rearing his head back, Vincent sent a piercing howl to the sky and to the full moon above him. His half-finished cigarette went flying. The Iurhir stopped their advance for a second, thinking that this werewolf was calling his pack. Vincent’s howl didn’t sound like one of requesting aide; it sounded more of one of challenge and preparedness for battle.

Vincent’s torso twisted down and he placed both hands on the ground as he sprawled out on all fours. Blue spiritual energy surrounded him, flowing through and around his body. His eyes met those of the spirit dog leader and already they began to change color from green to gold. Teeth began to change form, his canines elongated and shifted position. Molars and incisors gained sharpened image. The swirling spiritual energy rose from his skin like steam and another thing happened. His skin began to tear from his hands, pulled off by the spiritual energy emanating from his own body. Under the skin were fur and long claws. More of his skin seemed ripped off, revealing bulging bulky muscle covered in long shaggy white fur. The hair on his head turned stark white and the hair tie that usually kept it tight snapped off from the influx of power and energy. The skin ripping off his form flowed along from his hands, up his arms, causing even his trench coat to seemingly blast off of his body.

Skin continued to rip off of his body and revealing the inner wolf, the primal force that once roamed the earth while the moon was young. He was now more than the Urshal form, he was a creature of half wolf and half nightmare. The Dog spirits stepped back in fear.

He spoke, only now it was pure First Tongue with a snarl and growl around every syllable. “May you feel the sting of Mother Luna as I have had to as I gained my strength!” More spiritual energy surrounded his claws and teeth. They developed into silver, the most dangerous substance to a werewolf, and the glowing aura around them ensured that his teeth and claws would scar the spirits for life.

Roaring, Vincent lunged at the alpha spirit, teeth bared and claws spread.