Chapter 172: Chapter 158 – A Peaceful Decade

"What few periods of peace you get, you should cherish. All too often, they last for far too short a time." - Saying attributed to Khaer ul Tessarii, Lacerta Rex, Imperator, First Emperor of the Third Elmaiya Empire.

"You kids sure grow up so fast," noted Aideen as she approached Lucea and Maria, who were talking to each other. Artair was off to the side of the toom, quite obviously drunk, and was trying to dunk Grigori's face into a barrel of ale together with Zoya.

 

Aideen, Maria, Lucea, and the various younger kids were probably the only sober people in the room at the moment, as the others went deep into their drinks and the celebration feast became far more rowdy. Just the way the therians like it.

 

Neither of the younger girls were much of a drinker, and they refrained after a couple glasses, whereas Aideen would only be affected by alcohol when she allowed herself to be affected.

 

Over the decade Maria had grown into a strapping young woman, tall and broad of shoulder, with her therian blood in full display, yet some lines on her face and the way her limbs are proportioned felt more… human, especially her hands.

 

Lucea on the other hand had grown fast. The young therian girl was now almost the size of her grandfather - and probably already at her adult size, since Aideen recalled the females of her breed tend to be slightly smaller than the males - whereas the last time she saw her, the little girl barely reached her waist.

 

The girl had been orphaned before she even hatched, her parents killed in the later days of the civil war, when she was still an egg waiting to hatch. Her grandfather, the emperor - who was drunkenly dancing a jig on the table to the cheers of the test - had raised her from her earliest days, and to many, likely groomed her to be his successor.

 

Other than her matured proportions, the girl had not changed much. When they last met, Aideen had mistaken the girl's white feathers as down yet to be shed, but it turned out that they were the natural coloring of her feathers, which now looked even more vibrant and pristine.

 

Both girls raised their glass - with fruit juice inside, Aideen noted - to welcome her when they noticed her approach, and Aideen accepted the toast with the flagon of ale in her hand.

 

The three of them chatted lightly, mostly over the events of the past decade. For both the empire and the lichdom, it had been a decade of peace, as the empire had mostly dealt with its renegade problems, and nobody had been foolish enough to provoke the lichdom.

 

Maria shared some information from the jarldoms, most just some minor conflicts that ended after a few skirmishes. The only one Iadeen noted was that a Jarldom on the western border had apparently clashed with Vitalica, and the clash apparently lasted a good couple of months before both sides called it off.

 

She herself shared some information in turn, that another clash between Antemeia and Vitalica had occured around the same time, probably before the clash with the jarldom. It too ended inconclusively with both sides retreating to their original borders.

 

The current leader of the Death's Hand had speculated that the jarldom might have struck to help curb Vitalica's expansionist drive, since they might have been the next target after Antemeia.

 

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That expansionist tendency had been noticed by intelligence agents from Ptolodecca, as the buildup of soldiers and armaments were quite easy to take note of. Aideen could only sigh at those news, annoyed that people didn't want to cherish the peace they had.

 

Even so, she contented herself that overall, the continent was still at peace. Even the usually fractious collection of smaller nations to the north were at a relatively peaceful situation, and the most that people nowadays heard of wars, werw news from far away, from beyond the continent.

 

For the Unliving, whose numbers slowly started to grow, things also mostly became easier. The empire had taken a friendly stance and thus they are tolerated there, and in some of the smaller countries, the sentiment was similar.

 

Even the places that refused to tolerate their existence, generally did not stop them from leaving. This naturally leads to a steady trickle of new unliving to the lichdom, which remained the nation most accepting of Unliving, and by now, over a thousand had gathered in Thormutgent.

 

Aideen herself had not needed to go out on missions to extract newly risen Unliving over the past decade. She just lived a relaxed, happy life with Artair in the capital, at times helping out where she could with his research.

 

It was a blissful life, the years passing by idly, as there were few matters of import that had required her attention, or her help. While she and Artair had practically stayed at home for the past decade however, his family did come to visit a few times.

 

They had arrived by ship, via Port Erbe, and then Aideen and Artair either welcomed them there, or on the later visits, brought them straight to Tohrmutgent in one of the express undead-powered carriages.

 

The relationship between the empire and the lichdom had grown much closer over the past decade. Many merchants reaped great profits as they explored the new trade routes made possible. Even open immigration happened, if nowhere near the scale of those that had sought refuge during the civil wars.

 

It was a rare period of peace for the continent. Even the western isles, where conflict and even open warfare between tribes were the norm, were on a peaceful period, as the tribes recovered and recuperated from the losses they sustained from the civil war. Many of them had sent people to support Khaer Ul's faction in exchange of their current independence, and the losses from that time was still felt.

 

Aideen just hoped that these peaceful years could stay a while longer.

 

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