Chapter 35: The Will of Nature

Minsc was crying his eyes out.

"Those things she said to you aren't true," Imoen told him. She was too small to easily hug the giant ranger as he sat on a fallen tree, so she'd settled for sitting next to him and holding his hand. Boo sat on Minsc's shoulder, quivering nervously.

"She said I might as well eat Boo!" Minsc wailed.

"Minsc, do you know of any animals that would eat their children or their mates or their companions for breakfast?" Ember asked. She sat on the other side of Minsc, and was stroking his arm consolingly.

"Some do, when they're very very hungry," the ranger sniffled.

Ember sighed quietly. "But they don't ever do that when there's enough other food, because they care about their companions, right?" Minsc nodded slowly.

"So it's not the same at all, is it? None of us would dream of eating Boo, because we love him," Imoen said. "It's not Boo's fault that Faldorn doesn't want anyone to eat meat. She just wanted to upset you."

Minsc wiped a tear from his eye. "Faldorn is a mean little girl," he said.

"That she is," Ember said. She sat with Minsc and Imoen for a while longer, then petted Boo's head and headed back to their main campsite. Nobody was in sight except Faldorn; the shadow druid was tending the fire with a look that said she'd rather smother it. The three rabbits that Minsc had caught earlier that morning, and which had sparked the ruckus, lay neglected on the ground nearby.

"How could you say those things to Minsc?" Ember asked Faldorn, her voice edged with anger.

"He should not have killed those rabbits!" Faldorn snapped back. "They were born to live free in the woods, not to be cruelly butchered by some lumbering human!"

"You told him he should eat his hamster instead!"

"Those rabbits had as much right to live as that hamster which he has bound to himself with no regard for its natural wishes and instincts!"

"Does Boo seem unhappy to you?" Ember asked coldly.

"How can it not be, taken so far from its home?!"

"A home where he might have been cold, or sick, or eaten by wolves?"

"If nature willed it."

"So as long as a human isn't involved, it's all the will of nature? If a wolf eats a rabbit - and I am sure dozens of them are eaten every day while they're going about their free lives, with the amount of wolves we've seen - it is as it should be, but if a person eats a rabbit, it's murder?"

"People should know better! There are plenty of edible plants; berries, tubers, leaves."

"But pulling a tuber out of the ground will kill the plant, you know."

"It is different."

"How? If people should not hunt for meat, then killing plants should be wrong as well." Ember stepped closer to the fire and grabbed the three dead rabbits. She felt like reminding the shadow druid that people were a part of nature, too, but decided that arguing any further with Faldorn would pointless; from what she had seen so far, the girl was cemented in her views. It baffled Ember that the shadow druids could be so adamant about people being such a negative influence on the forest. She could have understood it if they were angry about wanton destruction, but the tantrum Faldorn had thrown over these three rabbits... And they're 'protecting' this part of the forest, Ember thought grimly. Let the spiders and dire wolves go on rampages, as long as people stay away! Sitting down on a log, she drew a dagger from her belt and somewhat clumsily set about the task of skinning the rabbits. Thankfully, Minsc had gutted the animals before he'd brought them to the camp.

"What are you doing?!" Faldorn exclaimed.

"I am certain you would not want their bodies to go to waste, now that they are already dead," Ember said. She finished skinning the animals, spitted them on long twigs, and placed them over the fire to roast. Faldorn glared angrily at her and stomped away into the woods. Let her have her roots, Ember thought with a sigh. She continued with her breakfast preparations and tried not to dwell on how deeply the shadow druids - Faldorn in particular - bothered her.

-.-.-

By midday, the group had reassembled, eaten, and continued onward. The trek was made miserable by everybody's foul mood and the equally foul weather; rain was falling in sheets, and thunder rolled in the distant hills. Every few minutes, they heard the loud clap of nearby lightning.ยจ

"This is all the infernal druid's doing, I am sure," Edwin grumbled unhappily.

"Don't complain; you're the one with the protective boots," Imoen told him.

Something cried shrilly overhead, loud enough to drown out the sound of the weather.

"Get down!" Kivan hissed.

Everyone but Faldorn crouched to the ground. Moments later, they heard the swooping of giant wings overhead. A wyvern, many times larger than the infant creatures they had seen at the cave, flew over them with a cow held in its talons. It circled them once, released an ear-piercing shriek, and flew away.

"That is your wyvern," Kivan told Coran, who had turned very pale. "Let us seek cover, fast," the ranger said.

"Too late," Imoen said. Above the trees, they could see two full grown wyverns, flying straight towards them.

"Where did the other come from?" Ember asked.

"We must be near their lair," Kivan said. "Do not panic." He drew his bow, to Faldorn's protests.

The wyverns landed a few moments later, one in front of the group and one behind the group. One of the creatures lumbered towards Faldorn, who stared at it in rapt fascination. Edwin was pelting the other wyvern with magic missiles, but was unable to slow it down as it approached him and Imoen.

"Stop!" Imoen yelled, and aimed her wand of frost at the creature. A beam of frost shot out of the wand and hit the wyvern squarely between the eyes. With a sound like glass breaking, frost spread from the point of impact and covered the wyvern in seconds. Raindrops froze as they hit the creature, coating it with a glasslike layer.

Imoen was still staring at the ice statue she'd made when Edwin hit it with a flame arrow. The wyvern shattered into a thousand pieces.

"Wow," Imoen whispered.

Minsc had managed to deter the other wyvern with a few blows from his sword, but had suffered for it; the wyvern had managed to sting him at least once, and the left side of his face was swelling. Ember darted behind the ranger and quickly pressed her hand to his neck, allowing her gift to burn the poison out of him. Faldorn had also been struck; a swipe from the creature's tail had knocked her unconscious, and she lay by the root of a tree. Just as well, Ember thought, she'd probably side with them against us. Kivan and Coran had showered the wyvern with arrows, and it was showing signs of weakness.

"Let me try this again!" Imoen yelled. She shot a blast of frost at the remaining wyvern, but the result was nowhere near as spectacular; the cold merely burned a gouge in its shoulder. "Aw," Imoen exclaimed.

"Your first hit was a very lucky one," Edwin told her. "(And a rare one. Not one in a thousand could have done that.)" For a moment, his expression almost seemed pleased, but it soon returned to his customary scowl when his acid spell failed to cause any significant harm to the wyvern.

After what felt like hours of wearing the wyvern down, Ember managed to cut a deep gash in its neck. The wound made the creature wobbled slightly, and Minsc seized the offered moment of opportunity; with a loud shout and a vicious swing of his blade, he cut its head off.

"Finally!" Imoen sighed.

"There's your head, Coran," Ember said, panting. "I suggest you pick it up before the druid comes to." The elf wasted no time in following her advice.

"You will be headed directly to Beregost, of course," Edwin said. "(One can only hope.)"

"What, and deprive you of your share of wealth? Never!" Coran said as he wrapped the wyvern head in a burlap sack. "Besides, your task is not yet done, and who better to aid you with it!"

"It'll be dangerous," Ember said.

"Great peril yields great beauty," he said with a broad grin. Ember and Imoen exchanged glances.

"You are skilled enough with the bow," Kivan said. "Your help will be appreciated." Behind him, Edwin sighed exasperatedly.

"What... what have you done?" Faldorn said weakly as she slowly got up up from the soaked forest floor.

"Saved your life, and ours," Ember said.

"They would not have touched us if you had not shown aggression!" Faldorn shouted. "I could have convinced them to leave us be!"

Ember stomped towards the shadow druid. "Could you? You seemed too preoccupied with gawking at them to do anything at all!" she growled.

"They would have respected my will! Instead, you have needlessly disrupted the balance, just as the Archdruid warned!"

"How is forcing them to act according to your will any less disrupting than our not walking into their mouths? I don't see how that fits with your ethos of letting animals do what they want!" Ember said angrily.

"You could not possibly begin to understand what our work entails!" Faldorn snapped.

"I understand enough," Ember said. "Faldorn, we can't both destroy the mine and let ourselves be eaten by the friendly denizens of these woods. And I'm tired of your complaining about our destroying nature with everything we do. We will do what we have to to get to the mine, and you will shut up about it, or by the gods, I'll feed you to the next wyvern we see. Do you understand?"

Faldorn opened and closed her mouth a couple of times.

"Do you understand?!"

Faldorn nodded.

"Then let us continue," Ember said.

Imoen ran up to Ember and squeezed her arm. "My hero," she whispered with a small grin as they walked onwards.

They did not travel far before they found the wyverns' lair; the odour made it very difficult to miss. "Revolting," Edwin said, and covered his mouth with one of his sleeves.

The lair was in a shallow cavern with a wide mouth. The dirt around it was torn and stained red, and several trees had been destroyed, probably to clear enough space for them to use their wings properly. A quick glance revealed a number of cows, horses, wolves, bears, and people piled up inside the cavern. All of them were dead. Some were partially eaten, some were rotting, some were merely torn apart as if they were playthings. Others were all but reduced to bones. In one end of the cave they saw a clutch of giant, leathery eggshells. They were empty, and were covered with an assortment of moulds and slimes.

Ember wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Do you call this a natural part of a forest?" she asked Faldorn. The shadow druid didn't answer.