You hit him at maybe forty miles an hour, blast him right out of the saddle and into the trunk of an old maple. That would kill most people, but he keeps fighting, trying to bring the rifle into line. Then you sink your fangs into his chest and he screams as you wrench him back and forth. You've trained for this, and you snap him left right left right, four quick jerks, breaking his neck. You fling the body away and it skids down a slope and across a frozen river, leaving a furrow of pale snow dotted with blood and gore.
You breathe deep, your breath steaming, and glance back at the trail of destruction you've left through the woods. Then you notice the horse is still standing.
"Well done, little wolf," the dead rider's horse says through bloody lips. Then its face splits open as its incisors lengthen, and it hurls itself at you.
So far, everything had gone according to plan, just as you had practiced a hundred times. But now you're forced to think on the fly as you confront the real threat, this mangled horse-thing. You taste blood in your mouth, hear your frightened breath…now it's for real. No mistakes.
I'm quick enough to dodge, weave, and fall back until this Bane makes a mistake.
I rely on stealth and cunning, disappearing into the undergrowth and then striking from the shadows.
I'm hearty enough to shapeshift into my war form before the monster reaches me…and tear it apart.
Next
Garou are not creatures of mindless Rage. The five forms require cunning to use wisely, but also great physical vigor to deploy in the middle of a battle. But you know that not even this monster can stand against a werewolf in crinos form. Letting the Rage flow through you like bloody lightning, you leap, twisting through the air to avoid a scything hoof, then land on all fours and grit your teeth.
Then it's like your teeth turn inside-out, ripping through your jaw, piercing your brain. The pain is incandescent as your bones shatter and re-knit, your spine transforms, and you rise up on two legs, a nine-foot-tall walking wolf with dinner-knife claws and huge, hooked fangs. For a moment, you're both blinded by a shockwave of superheated steam as your accelerated metabolism reacts with the freezing air.
When you can both see again, the horse-thing scoffs—an oddly human sound. It's not impressed, certainly not insanely terrified, the way regular humans fear a werewolf's crinos form. It rushes you, cat-quick, fangs bared.
You twist and drive one hand up under its jaw. Your claws explode out the back of its head, smoking with brains. You both skid backwards and your clawed feet leave a furrow of snow as the monstrous thing keeps trying to move forward, mindless and implacable. But when you both stop, you wrench your hand out of its head and it drops without a sound, already dead.
Next