Maybe you could rely on your occult education if Black Tarn had formally instructed you, but she didn't even teach you what a philodox needs to know. But now, your hopes lie in the sensitivity of your faculties and your spiritual focus. You remember Black Tarn telling you that her rite used a reflective surface to enter the Umbra. But presumably not just anything will do. What is suitable for your journey? You close your eyes and concentrate.
The air here is thin and images assail you: useless howling nonsense, the echoes of half-formed or long-extinct spirits. You feel the cold sinking into your bones. A healthy werewolf can regenerate from almost any injury, but you're still screwed if you freeze solid. Ignoring the spreading numbness, you listen until you sense something. You start to walk, following an elusive trail, a faint tug.
A snowy tree branch brushes your face, and you open your eyes. You're before a frozen stream, as yet uncovered by snow, that glitters in the starlight. A great sense of rightness assails you here, so clear it feels almost violent in its intensity. This is it. Breath coming quickly, you focus on stars and spirits, and stare deep into the ice. And there, moving behind and beyond the ice, among the stars, is Beaver—the spirit of Clay's pack.
Beaver floats in slumber, tumbling slowly like a civilization-ending asteroid, rimed with frost and glittering with starlight. Trails wind through the frozen river made of stars or spirits or ice. A canine shape slips along one of them, a flickering black shadow, then disappears.
Your fingers touch the ice. You're off the Map now, close to the Umbra, but not there yet.
"Beaver, wake up!" I pound the ice. I need him to help me enter the Umbra, and I can't awaken him with the proper rites because I don't know them.
"Black Tarn, where are you?" I know she's on the other side, deeply attuned to this spirit-realm. I reach into the ice, hoping to feel her hand.
We're doing this to cure Clay. And the first step is looking around for what infected him. Do I see anything unclean on the other side of the ice?
I wait in silence for Beaver or Black Tarn to help. Here I really do feel like a cub, and I'll follow my elders' advice.
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