"Read," Elton says, handing you a slim folio bound in green cloth.
THE ORDER OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD
BY CASIMIR LUBASIK
A small tome in the sort of archaic, rambling English that tells you the author preferred to write in Latin, it outlines some of the more common nature spirits found in this part of North America. You haven't read this exact text before, which seems to contain transliterations of names and titles in languages now extinct. You recite the words, your focused will compensating for your limited understanding. The recitations are enervating, as if the lost spirits are feeding on your vitality to restore themselves, but finally you feel the knots of corruption dissolve and spirits starting to answer. And then all at once, a pulse of spiritual power from Elton frees the knotted and sickly spirit-paths in the defiled swamp. Life-energy flows around you, and then out into the wilds in a burst so powerful you can almost see it. Branches sway; snow swirls across the desolate landscape. And then the spirits come rushing in.
They wash over the land. Some dance and laugh; others howl with Rage or shine with tranquility: protean spirits of the Wyld, delicate geometric shapes loyal to the urban tribes, the shades of ancestors and fallen heroes. Elton shouts their names, not like a sorcerer chanting words of binding, but as a man calling out to old friends.
The air grows thin and sparkling as you see into the Umbra and watch the spirits settle around the periphery of the defiled Broad Brook Caern, far enough away that the Wyrm-stuff in its heart will not taint them, but comfortably close to their old abodes. Your shifting vision perceives three places where the spirits have settled…you see each place simultaneously, in shifting fragments of shattered mirror…
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The deep, trackless woods, where no regular mortal has ever stepped. Black trunks, white snow, pure shimmering streams that wind beneath crystalline ice…
The barrows of the ancestors, quiet tombs of werewolves and their allies slain at the Battle of Graves Farm or battles centuries ago, low grassy hills marked with Garou glyphs and rough-hewn stones, wreathed in ghostly mist…
The liminal zone between the wilds and the People of the Map: your right eye sees wretched urban blight, polluted and accursed, but your left eye sees a frenzied realm of teeming spiritual activity. Red bricks, rusted metal, feral cats stalking the alleys, clever spirits that have learned to adapt and survive in the shadow of humanity…
"Matulo," Elton says.
The sound of rushing water. The last remnants of David Banicki's dam sink into the mire. Cold wind races through the valley. You're freezing, your hands and face numb. Elton's lips are blue, but he's smiling.
"Did it work?" you ask.
The sky is still red. Wait, the red is to the east now. It's dawn.
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