Neverwinter Forest So, what's the problem?

Cypress barked a laugh at the paltry female’s sardonic rejoinder. He perceived a childish petulance in the way she veered wildly off topic, spouting her platitudes while her pretty lips contorted into a mean-tempered snarl. “You’re wrong,” he drawled calmly, a mirthless smile flickering fleetingly across his sinister mien. “I have respect for plenty of wolves — I just don’t have any for you.” If Ondine believed her petty insults could “break” the eidolon, she was wrong. He’d been broken by forces greater and more powerful than she could ever hope to be. He had earned his life. He had earned his way. For the water witch to suggest anything otherwise was brazenly ignorant, and the chuckle that spilled from Cypress’ lips was shocked out of him with honest amusement. “Oh,” he said, his hackles beginning to spike in earnest as saliva pooled beneath his tongue, “I see.” Ondine had limned each syllable in pyrite, but once he scratched the surface —

“Life sure hasn’t been nice to you, has it? Must be rough — riding someone else’s coattails so you could squeeze your way into a pack before winter, watching your whelp grow fat and round on other wolves’ caches, taking up a mantle that you don’t deserve and can’t fit — now that’s a crying shame.” Cypress took a step forward, the muscles in his hindquarters tautening as his shoulders arched forward and his muzzle dipped low. His sulphureous eyes never left the false queen’s mismatched ones. “Let me tell you something, might help you figure out where you’ve gone wrong.”

The simmering growl that backed his quiet baritenor broke free as he made his point crystal clear: “This pack doesn’t need you. It’s you who needs this pack. That’s how it’s always been. You’re a mouth to feed — a loud mouth that never quits — but when you’re dead and buried, nobody’ll remember you the way they remembered Scimitar and Eshe.” He snapped at the air before her, fangs flashing as a string of spittle gnashed from his grinning mouth — a warning. “Now get away from me.”

Ondine, not one to accept insubordination to such a blatant degree, demanded that Cypress stand down — but he is a brat and refused to. Then he went GRAWRAWERIUAWE and she went AIOWYERQIWUEORQWER and ultimately she beat the beans out of him, and he slunk back off to the swamp to lick his wounds like a scrawny ogre.