Outside Leopoldville -- Savannah
Encompassing the small colonial outpost stands a ring of thorn bushes which limits the approaches to the town. Beyond this makeshift fence flourishes a mixture of vegetation, blending the biomes of the traditional African grasslands with those of the rain forest. Shorter brush are punctured by taller emergent evergreens. Stanley Pool remains the dominant geological feature of this region, while the barrier hills of the basin are bisected by the tremendous rush of the Congo over the series of cataracts towards the ocean. Scores of smaller ravines and tributaries pour into the big river and convert this region into a dynamic series of bluffs, cutbanks and rocky plains.
Obvious exits:
Road to Matadi Kintamo Leopoldville Eastern Barrier Mont Leopold
GAME: This room may be monitored with +watch.

All is calm on the grassy front, the evening moon on the rise with little of the smoke of dreams to block it. Parting of grasses heralds the cheetah's slow, cautious approach towards the very spot that terrified him so in the lands of the fantasy worlds. Ears back against his head, he gazes around with head ducked between his shoulders, almost expecting some ambush of hyenas.

The Swara finds that the jackal-woman is already there, having left her birth form behind as she walks up and down the barrier of thorns. Looking for some trace of what happened. A body left behind. But there is no fire, bodies, or gathering of two-legs.

Fireborn parts his jaws, tasting the air with a long indrawn breath. Nothing but the smell of the jackal-woman. No stench of the Unmaker, no reeking of Ajaba. Caution in every stalking step, the Swara flows up from his form of birth into the shape of man. He arches up like a growing sapling from the grasses, and finally solidifies into homid form. For a simple second, he waits, taking in the new visions of color that dance in his darkened eyes. Then he speaks. "Bon soir." Indeed, a good evening...lacking in terror and madness.

You shift and contort into Homid.

Daia nearly jumps out of her skin, as she turns to face Azi. Not having heard or scented, the Swara's aproach. Her fingers are curled like claws and her teeth are bared, as if she was in the warform. Her back straightens, as brain registers that this is not an attack. "But... You're dead." She spits out, in badly accented french. "Hyena kill you." Must be a ghost, thats it. Wouldn't be the first one that Tempts-Fate has ever come across.

Azi watches the jackal-woman tensely, also wary of the Garou as he'd sworn to the Mother that she too, had been in that battle. "So I thought, too. I am not dead. Only in my dreams..." The Swara exhales slowly, taking his eyes off the jackal to examine the grasses. "And you ran."

Daia frowns, becoming defencive. "Only after you were dead. There were too many. I did not want to die, so I fled with my packmate. I killed one. Could not kill all."

Azi shakes his head with a toss, much like a cat would in throwing off dirt. "It does not matter." The native man walks carefully through the dry grasses, fingertips brushing the blades softly. "Why were we... " The Swara turns, facing the lady again. "A snake, in the sky. Enemies, of the Unmaker's hand. Why...now...? Why this dream?"

Daia begins pacing in agitation. "A dream." She grunts, digesting this thought. "Smelt hyena, came here. Daniel was being attacked. Tried going to spirit wold, see if I could help. I... got stuck. My anger called dragon-ghost."

The priest... the Swara's eyes narrow with suspicions. But he was dead when the cheetah had arrived, gruesomely savaged by the mad cacklers. "Hyena, yes. But ... not all." Azi resumes his circular walking, raising his gaze to scan the treelines and the sky from a higher perspective. "The spirit world... I have not walked within. What did the dragon ghost want?"

Daia frowns and abrubtly sits, relasing nervous energy by tearing up chunks of grass with her hands. "Called me egg-breaker. Saw dragon kill my pack."

Azi looks remotely disturbed at the Strider's grasstearing. "Do not pull the roots of the land, for your anger," he levels with a low warning tone. "Why would the dragon be angry? What did you do? What did you say?"

Daia sighs heavily and complies, settling for tearing the grass she has already pulled into ever smaller pieces. "Did nothing!" The Strider practically snarls. "Said I brought evil. Told that I try to protect the land. Dragon said I not do enough. I do not know why it was angry."

Azi does not sit, but continues pacing in the wide circle around the spot of the dream. "Do you not remember? There were two hands worth of evil. The snake of the sky... I have seen before. It shines like the colors of rain in sun. It is the Unmaker's child." The Swara crouches, inspecting a footpath that only tells of the antelope that have stopped by. "It's words are twisted as its tongue and body."

Daia frowns. "No. Snake of Rainbow colors is not Unmaker. Is maker, chaos. I found its secret. Told lion people." The lupus shakes her head, fustrated. "Hard to explain what happened. Do not speak these words that well."

Azi tilts his head, and says plainly in French, "Do you speak 'Swahili'? 'Chokwe'?"

Daia switches to Swahili greatfully. 'Yes, I speak this human tongue more easily.'

Azi nods with the switch, taking another scan of the savannah. The dream has left the Swara disconcerted to say the least, wary. 'If the snake of the dreams is not of the Unmaker, then why did it aid the Choosers? There were more... monsters. Madness in their eyes, even more than the hyenas.'

Daia lifts up her hands, hoping to silence the Swara. 'I'll tell you what I know, what happened to me. That may help.' Daia pause, just long enough to gather her thoughts. 'When I got stuck in my Gauntlet, the first thing I saw with my back. They were held up with pieces of wood. Like this.' She streaches her arms out, just the way her packmates were streatched out on the crosses. 'Spiders, spirits of the weaver were drinking their lifeblood. When the dragon came, it killed them and layed them at my feet. You did not see the dragon very well, it was not the snake of rainbow colors. It was a diffrent spirit. It said that I brought the unmaker with me. I said that I had not, that I tried to protect the land. As my Tribe always has.' The jackal-woman fixes Azi with a steady look. 'You know that we have always been loyal too these lands. I told the dragon this and that we were trying to keep the white Garou from growing stronger, because some of them have forgotten their purpose. It hurt Daniel, then. Covering him in fire. The dragon said it was punishing Daniel for my crimes, for foresaking the other Garou.'

Daia continues. 'I think that soem have forgotten their purpose, so I question them. As my moon demands. Even if I loose honor in their eyes.'

Azi listens carefully as the Jackal-lady tells her part, a calm visage upon him. 'Your tribe and the lions... all have part in protecting the land. I did not see the dragon well, no. Then, why was the holyman its target?' The Swara's disturbance in thoughts is clear. It makes no sense, other than the Unmaker had such a strong presence in the dream.

Daia snorts softly, as she thinks about that. 'Because he is one of the white Garou, and the dragon considered them all the same.'

'Fair enough,' Azi replies with a likewise grunt. At this point, all the dogs are pretty much the same to him. 'I woke with wounds. None that did not heal swiftly, but it is still...' the Swara drops off there, examining a part of his arm. 'It was a dream, and it was not a dream. Dark magic. Of the spirits, maybe?' The Swara starts to gaze back at the Strider. 'What about the ones that were not hyenas? I only saw some, but they were not hyenas. Beasts of the Unmaker.'

Daia scowls. 'I do not know. They remind me of the white garou is some ways. Perhaps, they followed them here. I did not see them until I made it back to the relm, after the dragon's fire had scorched my skin. I tried to save Daniel.'

Azi rubs at one of his arms again, and then kneels into the grasses to feel a little more accustomed to the darkening landscape. 'Then it is to the others we must ask our questions. It stinks of their kind. I will speak with Daniel again.' Daia nods, lips pulling back from her teeth. 'Yes, we must ask him. Of the non-jackals, he is the most likely to answer. Shall we ask together?'

An eye slits at the thought of having to cooperate with the jackals, but this is not a time to be worrying about shifter specifics. 'Yes,' he replies. 'We will find the meaning of this dream, and the signifance of the strange enemies, and the dragon.'

Daia seems to notice this, as she fixes the Swara with a steady glare. 'These outsiders are strange to both our people. We have never been friends, but we have learned some tolerence over the generations.'

'We have. And that is why we will both question them together,' Azi states with another grunt of resignation. He turns his gaze right back to the jackalwoman, undeterred by her glares. 'And I shall tell the lions of them, as their numbers are more, and their paws large.'

Daia nods, satisfied. 'Yes, that would be wise. When angered, they are very dangerous. Jackal's can run faster, which is why we can feed from their kills and live to tell of it. Sometimes, even Jackals do not run fast enough.' Daia stands, looking over the landscape. 'Let us hope, for the non-jackals sake, that these monsters did not follow them here. They cannot run as fast, as true jackals.'

Azi rises to his feet, brushing off dust from his legs as he does. There's a hint of a smirk in his face, but the darkness hides it as he turns. 'Let us hope that the monsters did not follow them here. And for the hyenas, to not join them. They will share the fate of death, if they do.' The Swara starts again to walk off into the savannah. 'Jackals run fast. But a cheetah, runs faster.' The last statement, said with a feline's smile, melts away into the wind as the Swara returns to his birth form and lopes off into the grasslands.