The Abyss

The final part. And by far the most emotional, but the most freeing. There isn't any great battle, no terrible minons of the Wyrm.. Just two friends, and one goodbye. Sparks the leeches. May he rest in peace like any good Child of Gaia.

The Abyss: An Unlikely Freedom



In the thirteenth week of my journey, I went to the Abyss to put a friend to rest.

The friend was called Sparks the Leeches.
He was a Theurge and an Elder of the Children of Gaia.
He died by sacrificing himself so that the Abyss would swallow a mighty enemy.

I was afraid that his spirit would be trapped in the Abyss forever.
This had happened to me once, due to an mishap while I was a fostern.
Sparks the Leeches came to rescue me then.
How could I do any less for him?

The Abyss is a place of unspeakable danger.
Shall I tell how I crept unseen through the territory of the Hive of the Jagged Maw?
Shall I tell how I tricked the minions of the Nightmaster into revealing the resting place of my friend’s body?
These are tales in themselves.
But what I have to tell tonight is this:

I found the remains of Sparks-the-Leeches in a chimney of stone, deep in perfect darkness.
The hidden scavengers of the place had all but picked his bones clean, but my rituals could tell: it was Sparks.

I sat there to think.

It is very quiet, so deep in the Abyss.

I had smell. My friend’s scent was faint but present.

I had touch.
I held a dessicated hand that had once been gentle and healing.

I heard a voice.

Take me home, it said.

“Sparks-the-Leeches?” I whispered. For the first time I reflected on what an inadequate name it was for him.

Yes. I brought the spider-god here and sent it into the depths. But it destroyed me.

“You were a hero.”

Give me a hero’s burial.

I was silent.

Take me home a hero.

“You are not Sparks,” I sighed.

Only silence answered me.

I realized that Sparks’ spirit was not here.
If it were anywhere, it would be here: my rituals had led me to this place.
But here there were only whispers and bones.

For the first time since entering the Abyss, I felt peace.
Sparks was not here!
His spirit was free.
And even as I thought it, I heard Unicorn’s voice as if from a long way off: He is free.

I considered why Unicorn hadn’t told me sooner.
Was there something I was here to learn?

I sat with my dead friend in the silence and the dark and thought.

He had died a hero.
He was free.
Even dying here, in the cold, in the dark, in the silence, deep beneath the earth – he was free.

And was this not what I have run from, all my days as a Garou?

Fleeing a cold death, dark and deep beneath the earth, eaten by the sacred mountain of my ancestors?

Had not Sparks suffered the same, and yet died a hero, free?

After some time longer, I left.

I left Sparks’ bones there. He has no need of them.

But I left my fear as well.
The sacred mountain cursed me with an omen of my death: but Sparks-the-Leeches showed me how to die.

I fear the end no longer.

Talking Crazy is Copyrighted to his player. Glyphs and elements of Werewolf the Apocalypse are copyrighted to White Wolf.