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Minerva moved behind the bar, setting a round of dishes in her steadily growing “to be washed pile.” It wasn’t that busy tonight, though. Quiet enough that she could probably get through to closing time without worrying about them.
With the dishes set aside Minerva’s eyes scanned the bar until they settled on a lone Draenei, sitting with an empty glass in front of her. Minerva tossed her dishrag over her shoulder, strolling down the length of the counter towards her.
“Another round, sweetheart?” she asked. Edinula glanced up from her glass, looking at Minerva for a moment before shaking her head.
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I believe that was enough for me.”
“You sure?” Minerva asked, lips twitching up into a sly grin. “It’s on the house.” Edinula’s expression became indignant at that, and she turned her nose up at Minerva’s words.
“Then I am positive I do not want it.”
“Suit yourself,” Minerva replied, scooping Edinula’s empty glass up. “One of these days I’ll get you to cut loose.” She turned back towards her dirty dish bin after saying that, though she had only made it a few steps before Edinula spoke up again.
“Excuse me. Minerva?” she said. Minerva paused, glancing back over her shoulder.
“Need something, hun?”
“No,” Edinula said, shaking her head. “I was just… wondering if I could ask you something.”
“Shoot.” Edinula nodded, though it took another moment for her to vocalize her thoughts.
“You are a worgen, yes?”
“Gee, what gave it away?” Minerva kept herself in human form most of the time, but she’d been known to shift on occasion, when rowdy customers called for it. She was fairly open in talking about it as well. Her inn was even called The Wolf’s Den. She wasn’t exactly subtle.
“Then…” Edinula said, “you are familiar with the Ritual of Balance?” As soon as Edinula asked that, Minerva’s smug expression dropped. She turned to face Edinula properly again, brows furrowed down.
“Now just where did a Draenei shaman hear about something like that? And maybe more to the point,” she added on, “what’s got you asking?”
“It is not meant to be a secret, is it?” Edinula replied. “But it is of interest to me. I thought that perhaps… it could be useful.”
“Useful,” Minerva repeated. “No offense, but you know it ain't exactly meant for your kind, right? Sort of a Worgen exclusive, that one.”
“I am aware,” Edinula huffed, expression scrunching into an adorably annoyed pout. “But I still believe it could be beneficial. It is meant to help order your mind, yes? To cast out the negative parts and purify yourself of their influence.” As Edinula said that Minerva’s furrowed brow shifted into a full-on frown. She set Edinula’s glass down, then walked towards her again, leaning in over the bar with her arms propped on the countertop.
“Wanna know a secret?” she asked, prompting Edinula to nod. “I never completed the ritual.” As soon as she said that Edinula’s eyes went wide. She leaned back in her seat a bit, and Minerva could see fear written across her face.
“You- You didn’t?” she stammered. “Then you-”
“Relax. I haven’t mauled you to death yet, have I?”
“I… suppose not.” Edinula relaxed slightly after that, but only slightly. Minerva could tell she was still tense. “Then, if you do not mind my asking… why did you not complete it?”
“I tried to,” Minerva replied. “But I wasn’t ready. The ritual makes you dredge up all this old shit, makes you stare all your anger and your regrets and every bit of unprocessed trauma lurking inside your heart right in the face, and that’s just too much for some folks. I was one of those lucky failures, who just had to back out instead of losing my mind. But it was still too much for me,” she admitted.
“And yet, you have not succumbed to your curse,” Edinula said. “So you must have found some way to control it.”
“That I did,” Minerva replied. She looked past Edinula now, out the window, though it was too dark to actually make out anything outside. Not that she was focusing anyway. Her thoughts had already turned elsewhere, caught up on reminiscing.
“After I failed the ritual I boarded a zeppelin and headed up to Northrend,” she recounted. “I hiked up deep into the Grizzly Hills, as far away from any civilization as I could find, and then I just… leaned into it. All the rage, all the bloodlust, all the desire to tear and rip and kill, I stopped trying to fight it. I let it wash over me, and I met it head on.”
“That… sounds dangerous,” Edinula murmured.
“It was,” Minerva replied. “I went up there knowing full well I might not come back. There was something dark living inside my heart, and I knew that either I would conquer it, or it would conquer me.
“I spent three months up there, shut away from the rest of the world, listening to those bestial instincts inside me. I hunted for my food, tearing flesh straight off carcasses and devouring it raw. I fought for my life when something bigger than me decided I looked like a meal. Sometimes I would black out and wake up days later in a completely different part of the forest. It was a constant, agonizing war for survival. But in the end, living like that, living as part of nature… it made me realize something.”
“What was that?” Edinula asked. Her voice was a soft, breathless whisper. It was clear she was hanging on every word of Minerva’s story.
“I’ve always loved nature, ever since I was a little girl,” Minerva replied. “I used to love going on long hikes through the woods, or week-long camping trips into the wilds. But there was always something different about that. When you stock up on provisions in preparation for a camping trip, and you sleep in your tent, and you cook all your meals over a fire, it’s easy to forget that humans- that all life in the world and beyond- are still a part of nature. We’re still a part of its whims, we’re a part of its cycles, we’re a part of its grand design.
“That was what I found in Northrend,” she went on. “See, I’d been thinking about death and destruction as absolutes. As something final. And when I had the instinct to kill and destroy lurking inside me, I thought about it as something unnatural. A curse that wasn’t meant to exist in this world. But when I was in Northrend I became a part of nature again, and I saw death and decay for what they were: one step in a cycle.
“I’d watch a wolf bring down an elk and rip the flesh off its bones, and for the elk that was the end, but for the wolf it was survival. And that wolf might go on to reproduce, or it might get devoured by some even larger predator that would live on in its wake, and the cycle would continue. And so I came to realize that the urges living inside me weren’t unnatural. They were the most natural thing I could possibly feel. And they were something that needed to be balanced, carefully, like all things in nature. But they weren’t evil.
“When I went through the ritual of balance,” Minerva said, finally returning to her eyes to Edinula. Edinula jolted upright at the sudden attention, posture going perfectly straight. “I was confronted with all the shittiest parts of my life. Every regret, every unbearable memory. Every bad thing I’d ever done, or every single thing I wished I’d done differently. And I thought those memories were something to be ashamed of. I thought they were something I needed to triumph over and cast out. Like they were an evil that needed to be defeated. I realize now how much of an idiot I was,” she confessed.
“Then… If not what you’ve said,” Edinula asked. “The actual purpose of the ritual…?”
“It’s in the name,” Minerva replied, raising a finger. “Balance. It’s not about casting out the negative parts of yourself. It’s about embracing them. Meeting them head-on, letting them wash over you, accepting that they’re a part of you without letting them control you. And that just wasn’t something I was ready to do back then.”
“And now?” Edinula asked.
“Now?” Minerva replied. She pushed herself up from the bar, shrugging her shoulders once she was upright again. “Not sure. Might fair a little bit better. But I’m not in any rush to repeat it either way.”
“I see…” Edinula replied. She turned her eyes down towards the countertop, staring at it for a few long, silent seconds before she spoke again. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Minerva replied. “Now, you sure I can’t get you another round?” Another moment passed, before Edinula slowly nodded.
“Very well,” she said. “I suppose one more could not hurt.”