Death had a peculiar smell and a mixture of good and tragic memories for Rain. Fresh blood flowing over lush grass and leaves were from her first hunt. Decay, pus, and urine had greeted her in the stuffy home of the village elder at his passing. Burning wood and flesh had chased her in the wildfire of her early childhood. Now it lingered in the air with the dying smoke like a heavy fog, choking the trees and small plants and patches of grass that had survived the attack. Little fires sputtered at the small party as they searched for survivors or an entrance to the tunnels the red-haired human had spoken of.
The World Healer will mend this land, Rain thought. The nearest civilization posed no threat to the land and seemed to respect the wild, even if they did hack down trees from time to time for trivial things. The goblins, on the other hand, had had minimal respect for anything outside of themselves. They had to find the tunnels and make sure corruption wouldn't return. But that was almost impossible through the ash and smoke.
"If we find survivors beneath the surface, what are your plans for them?" Gundar asked.
He is uncomfortable here, Rain realized. He feels anger...or is it guilt? It was hard to tell with the deva, such a strange and foreign creature. The tribe elder had told her of devas once. He had visited a city in his youth and seen one, an immortal servitor of the gods of civilization, a spirit who had chosen mortality to aid the "goodly races", though they weren't entirely mortal. Devas' souls were reincarnated upon death in the same sort of flesh. Yet even though they lived in such a perfect cycle of life and death, they wished to abandon this gift, to become wholly living or return to their immortal lives.
"Depends on who we find," Shakairra answered. "If it's children and non-combatants we let them go, banish them from this area. If it's warriors who choose to attack us, we kill them."
"Assuming we can find them," Quarrel-Karn added.
"Right."
Gundar looked distressed. "I have been praying to Moradin for guidance, yet he does not show me the way."
Shakairra gave a brief eye-roll out of the invoker's sight before Rain said, "That's because your god has limited power here."
Gundar paused, forcing the others to a halt. "I beg your pardon?"
Rain rested her hammer against her shoulder, comforted by its familiar great weight. "Gods draw their power from symbols and prayer. Look around, Gundar; you're in nature's realm now. If we want divine guidance we have to ask the spirits."
"Or we could just do this ourselves," Shakairra suggested.
"Yes, and look how great that's going," Quarrel-Karn complained.
Rain turned away from the group as Gundar asked, "You do not respect the gods, Romazi?"
"The only things the gods have given us are reasons to kill each other."
There was something in the side of the hill, hidden by trees. "The few people who correctly interpret their messages are either so full of themselves they do little to help the common folk or they get sucked into the clouds to become an angel and help only those who follow their god."
There was movement amid the rubble. "Never mind that there are plenty of people of other faiths who are perfectly good, decent folk."
Something...something of this world yet above it. "So no, Gundar. I don't respect or beg help from the gods because they pit good people against each other."
Rain inhaled the clearing wind and reached deep within, to her link with the spirit world, which was not another plane of existence like with the gods but was in fact this world. The distant trees drew into sharper focus, the smells became stronger and more distinct, she could feel the worms in the ground and see the spider rebuild her web. And there, where she had spotted movement, she could see an outline...of what?
"Rain?"
The link needs to be stronger, she realized, and slipped into her guardian form.
"Rain!"
"Oh, gods!"
Black scales coated her skin, replacing the thin layer of fur that usually covered her body. Her vision shifted from just the light bouncing off of objects to also seeing the heat within each being. She could feel the pulse of the world around her: the grass growing beneath her feet, the wind curling around her and running its fingers through her long and wild hair, the pack of wolves on the edge of the forest not a mile away running atop the plains, the herd of deer fleeing from the predators, the might of the great oaks and frailty of their dying leaves.
"What's happened to her?" Shakairra's voice was strong and firm thunder, almost completely covering her fear.
"Nothing." Gundar was fascinated. "She's taken a guardian form."
"A what?"
Quarrel-Karn groaned. "Great."
She had no time for it. Shakairra's confusion, Gundar's wonder, Quarrel-Karn's anger. Rain only had eyes for the wolf on top of the rubble.
It was a huge, transparent beast, twice the size of an ordinary wolf, the sunlight filtering through its white fur. The spirit turned and began to walk towards the falls.
Ignoring the others, Rain followed it as the trees thinned and the dirt turned to stone and the water deafened her sharp ears. The black-eyed, white-coated wolf hopped onto one of the large, flat stones of the little pond created by the falls that filtered into a stream. The wolf waited for Rain to jump onto another rock behind it, her toes curling over the edge to keep her balance, before it leaped into the falls, vanishing with a spray of water.
"Rain, what in the Nine Hells are you doing?"
Rain smiled, her long, forked tongue lashed our of her scaly mouth. "Following divine guidance." She jumped into the falls.
