Chapter 229: Chapter 213: Sense

Of course, it wasn’t quite as easy as that. Regina couldn’t get Nerlia in the palm of her hand just for asking. There was a lot to arrange and the Nerlian delegation pushed for actual, involved talks, which she supposed made sense.

She could have quibbled over the matter of peace talks, but in truth, she wanted to talk to them in a dedicated setting, so they could work things out comprehensively. As long as she didn’t let them get an attack of arrogance while they weren’t actually fighting each other, it should be fine.

Still, with Syman metaphorically throwing in the towel, and literally giving up his sword, things moved quickly. Ira talked to them to handle some details and they started hashing out arrangements for a larger conference, while already getting a few concessions squared away. Regina kept an eye on them and listened in, but found her attention drifting after a while. Ira had things under control and she didn’t really need to pay personal attention at this point, especially since she was just going to get summaries and analyses later. At least one of the Keepers was also listening in at any given point, and she had the impression they wanted to try on their analyst hats. For the hive, of course.

Ben was also paying attention, and already starting to direct his officers according to the results. It looked like actual hostilities in this theater of the war were going to stop completely, at least for now, so the army needed to change its stance. They would still keep moving, and would probably be needed for extensive garrison duties, if not an outright occupation force. Regina shared her impressions with Ben, checked in with a few of the others, and then mentally zoomed out to consider the lay of the land and her hive’s positioning.

It could be worse. They had a lot of minds scattered throughout the countryside, but several major clumps. One was Ben’s army, one the roughly distributed forces currently under Janis’ command. There were also detachments currently working to occupy the parts of Nerlia they’d, well, taken, of course. And then there was the hive’s home territory, largely the main base (which she might have to find a name for at some point) and the area around Forest’s Haunt. The detachment in the mountains rounded it out, but nothing much seemed to have happened there recently. Tim was currently with Ben’s army, and the other commanders hadn’t registered concerns.

Before Regina could start to delve deeper and focus on any one of those spots, she was interrupted by a System message, one she had been waiting for for a while, really.

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