Werewolf the Podcast: A Serial (Killer) Drama · Fenrir & Greg

Werewolf the Podcast: Battles in the Sky. (Episode 227)

·37 min

Finn and Montgomery are still stuck in the First World War, with trouble gathering in the sky and a storm beast somewhere inside it. The professor keeps throwing magic at the clouds while the clouds push back, and the whole thing starts to feel like a badly organised war against the weather. Montgomery, still very much the wing commander-to-be, gets dragged along in a BE-2C that is barely fit to be called a plane. It is a graceless little machine, more wire than conviction, and nobody is pretending otherwise. The episode lets the aircraft, the magic, and the monster collide at once. That collision is the point. The professor's spell starts tearing at the cloud mass and the storm beast begins to scream because it has finally noticed being bothered. The airships twist and shake while the crew keep irritating the thing as if annoyance might count as artillery. For a while, it does. Then the great brute decides it has had enough and turns its attention on the lead ship. Lightning wraps the thing and the plane gets pinched out of the sky. The ground rises fast. The pilot fights the stick until his arms burn, but the beast drags the aircraft down as if it weighs nothing at all. There is a very specific kind of terror in being treated like a nuisance by something enormous. The crash is ugly and fast. After that comes the professor, still hunched over the chalk, still muttering about wet fingers and the ridiculous habit of making invocations with a stick of chalk. The spellwork has done its work, but it has not made anything tidy. The storm beast is hurting. Simon and Montgomery are left with the battered silence that follows impact, and the last question hangs in the air with battlefield calm: what exactly is Montgomery? No werewolf appears yet, but the episode has clearly moved the pieces into place.

As heard by us

A First World War sky fight makes the horror feel absurd, close, and dangerous.

Battles in the Sky follows Simon and Montgomery Fortescue III into a First World War sky fight that feels powered as much by bad machinery and bad luck as by the threat overhead.

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Why you'd press play

A WWI sky fight where the plane loses to weather and something worse.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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