We had decided with the information we had, it was time to take the fight to the Skin Dancers. Bjorn had returned from watching over Gina and we were a full pack again In the meantime, we found out Clifford had taken the brunt of the bad publicity for Foss’ death. He personally bribed anyone of note who might start an investigation and told the newspaper a phony story about how Foss made the mistake of using the wrong urine, which incited the “bears.” We all felt bad about it and decided to try to find a way to use William’s money without alerting the authorities to his whereabouts.
Before we went off to find the Skin Dancers, Jonathon wanted to make some of those nifty Talens Ryan used to heal me a couple of days ago. He first tried entering the Umbra and looking for a spirit. This was the first encounter with Mabe. Jonathon tried to interact with her like any spirit, but she acted disoriented and finally left. Shortly after this, Crafty appeared and wondered what was going on. We told him Jonathon went into the Umbra and he quickly followed. Meeting Jonathon, he asked if he spoke to Mabe. Johnathon confirmed he did and Crafty then told us to leave her alone. He told us the story of how he met Mabe, that she was actually a Fae, and the deal for her to guard the Sept in exchange for no other Spirits being allowed in except our pack totem and White Lion.
After this, Jonathon proceeded to leave the Sept grounds and look for a spirit. His first attempt was to meet an owl spirit. Jonathon wanted to know the location of the spirits for the Talen he wanted to create, but could not meet the spirit’s demand of hunting in the Sept because of Mabe. Let down, but still determined, Jonathon returned to the Sept when he found a little field mouse spirit hiding in the grass.
Jonathon asked the same of the mouse that he did the owl, and the mouse replied he would in exchange for a meal. When asked how he would get a meal, the mouse told Jonathon he would just possess him for a short time. I, along with everybody there, was very opposed to this idea. I was worried the mouse could be a bane in disguise and told him to not worry about it, that we would find another way. Jonathon went ahead with it anyway and the mouse took Jonathon’s body into the cabin to eat just about everything, including my food, which I gave him.
While Jonathon enjoyed playing around as a field mouse, Mabe became aware of this and began to get very agitated until Bjorn, who had decided to watch over Jonathon, took him out of the Sept. Once there, the owl spirit Jonathon chatted with earlier noticed Bjorn with Jonathon in mouse form. He asked for the mouse, which Bjorn denied him, telling him it was not really a mouse spirit now. The owl told Jonathon to trust him and let him eat him, imploring him to “trust his spirits.”
After quite some prodding, Jonathon agreed and experienced a gruesome death from the perspective of the mouse before the owl spirit vomited him back up. Bjorn returned to the cabin and told the mouse the meal was over, and that it was his last. After a look of horror washed over his face, the mouse quickly took Jonathon’s body into the Umbra to find his spirit body. The mouse implied to Jonathon in a statement this had happened before, told him the location of the flowers needed for the Talen before switching back bodies and dying. In the end, Jonathon learned a hard lesson about spirits even he wasn’t aware of before.
Once Jonathon made the Talens, I used the Rite of the Questing Stone to hone in on the location of the Skin Dancers pack. It led us to a funeral home, which made sense since Eli kept smelling formaldehyde wherever they turned up. We staked out the funeral home until nightfall in order to prevent another breaking of the Veil.
Once night came, we saw a young man putting away luggage in the same van we earlier. He looked sad and I thought he might be a kinfolk who was denied his Garou pelt since we stopped them from getting one. We chose to enter the Umbra and leap out at them.
Finding them in the basement, we leapt out of the Umbra in Crinos form giving them a second to react, as not doing so would dishonorable to them and against our totem. One of them, a younger woman, told us they were willing to talk. We shifted back to Homid form and told them to make it quick. She told us if we were willing to let the pack of Skin Dancers go they would give us game changing information relating to the return of Samuel Haight.