Chapter 575: Chapter 575 - A Study With History: Disquiet Dusk Of Empires & Those That Would Haunt Or Possess Them Before The Dawn

"Hah... I sure could use some rest. I think we all can. Can’t we do this in the morning?"

The heiress had done many more things that were not expected of her throughout the evening. Notably, the fact that she took on the role of serving second plates, bowls, and refreshing everyone’s drinks while still tending to the child with one arm. Partly on a whim to show off a little humility and thankfulness, but mostly because she knew it troubled the staff. To watch her take their roles while still appearing thankful to *them*.

"Don’t deflect, dear. We need to have these discussions."

"I know, but I wanted to watch Qat out there seeing her brothers spar. I can feel it from here, but it’s not the same!"

"Sit, Elua er Goltbred."

"Yes, ma’am."

Not bothering to make it to the chair, Yatrel’s study had changed in the years since the last time Elua sat on the floor in it - but not by as much as she expected... considering all the other upgrades throughout the whole home. The desk was still the same one from about fifteen years ago, a rather sturdy one that bore little dent marks from too many careless tea cups or other tools. It had been bought to replace the decades old one that had come with the home - which itself was a piece of furniture now stuck in the family library. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

That one had been placed there expressly for her eldest daughter to use, since the precocious three year old girl had mentioned that she ought to have one like it. All while often napping against her mom’s desk and making a show of ’practicing letters’ in the woman’s view. However, it had been a great surprise to the brunette when the reddish-blonde woman actually agreed that it was time. If only for the fact that the small girl was actually given the exact great big desk... and not just bought a new one, sized more appropriately for her age.

’I *had* been practicing being exaggerated in wants and affections, like a child might. I knew it worked on father instantly, but it usually took a bit of time to see her do things. With commensurate result for the effort...’

Buying the private small home came to mind, as did a number of other things that the eldest daughter of the family - being bodily lifted and sat down in a proper chair - always had a small edge to them that she hadn’t considered.

’Wait, she readily agrees to a lot of things that just moved me out of her hair or underfoot, didn’t she... was I more of a bother to her as a child than I expected? Oh well. She loves me. Even if she is really upset right now~’

Maps of Qat’s territory and the Clearer Skies construction site competed for space with dozens of correspondence pinned in clusters on a moveable board. Sorted by the system the reincarnator could identify as her mother’s version of strategizing. The woman moved it out of the way before sitting in her favorite chair - still upholstered with the same cream colored, treated leather that El had changed out from the old and worn fabric.

"Honestly, I can never tell if I raised you right, but a touch too much like me... or you are just pretending, and are actually far too much like Ondua."

"Mother, the answer with me is - in almost all instances where there are two sides - that both are true. You should know this by now?"

"Putting aside what I am willing to agree that I know about you, letting us go valuable hours without preparing for the fallout of what you’ve done was a move that makes me want to throttle you. Just like him, for not warning me of his blatant message and decision with that gift."

Yatrel bringing up the lack of family symbol made a certain feeling in Elua twinge with a ’bitter’ feeling that was definitely *like* her dad. While expressive use of crests was a bigger thing in more distant lands - rather than the affluent families of their continent which had somewhat shed concepts of nobility, even though a feudal dominance layer remained on the appearance of ruling landholders sanctioned by Guild council - the Goltbred were certainly registered with a symbol.

It functioned as a veneer of traceable information safety, after all... if letters, ledgers, and any important documents were stamped or waxed with a recognizable and verifiable representation of an organization. Elua could look at the use case and history of it very logically in that way, but still recognize that there were more to symbols than their lines, curves, and uses. She was a sigilist after all... and knew that there was great meaning buried in any working.

Or any lack of engraving on an otherwise detailed piece.

"...Mm. I think he surprised us both there. Though I don’t think what I did was that surprising? The Yecine apparently needed a kick in the pride."

"Is that what you think you did?"

Both Skydancers had followed them inside, perching on the top of a shelf that once held a few boxes with personal mementos, but had been given over to the green bird. At least it had been when it needed a safe place that Onya was forbidden from entering and climbing up. Sometimes children needed clearer boundaries... and sometimes adults needed firmer words. Delivered after hearing their attempts at explanation.

"Tell me why. Tell me every detail. Tell me how you expect this to resolve."

Two sets of mint eyes clashed from less than a half dozen feet apart. A daughter who knew that her mother was not confident her child was *actually* going to clean up the ’mess’ she created... without the right prodding. And a woman who was only worried that the girl hadn’t thought about one thing - that their spouses would have a tough time at their job soon if the Yecine wanted to escalate.

Worse, she thought Elua might intentionally be driving Ondua into a corner. And while some teasing was fine, there was a point in it that it became something else. Something only Yatrel was allowed to do!

The heiress was quiet for long enough that the dusky twilight bird above them shifted its weight like it was thinking of dropping down for a more personal look. It wasn’t regret that made her tongue slow to work, Elua didn’t hesitate to defend things she’d already decided. It was mostly the process of choosing which sliver of the truth to start with, because her mother deserved more than a single one.

To call it retribution was right. A first strike for things they had not *yet* done was also correct. Framing it as doing it for herself, for those in that family she actually liked, or for the obvious Qatrand that she did essentially everything for... all of it was true. However, it was also all obvious and not worth talking about to someone who knew a hundred percent of what you thought about ninety-nine percent of the time.

"Forgive me for approaching this first with hypothetical philosophy, Yatrel er Goltbred. But it seems like the best way to me to stage the answer you are looking for rather than the one I’d want to give."

"A start is a start. I won’t mistake it for your finish line as this conversation isn’t a race. Though we are limited on time to set other things in motion."

"Very well. Do you know what it means for a respected empire to die?"

During her time in the Astral Exclave, the reddish-blonde cultivator had grown used to the many moods and modes of speaking that her child possessed with her reincarnated spirit. This one was the haunted academic, without a doubt. The same voice and severity that had accompanied some grand tellings of her past life events.

"There has not been one to fall in my lifetime, dear. But I have read histories. As I know you have."

"Yes. Books are wonderful, but they miss so much. Accounts of the victors supplant truths of the defeated. Small details to some are ignored or undervalued, though they are often evidence of a bigger influence. The kind that is not always the primary factors that scholars choose to identify. You’re aware of the Ouras situation, for instance. Something that moves silently through history until suddenly people know about it."

A simple nod from the Bloody Duelist. Problems without proper faces to punch - or less violent actions that were unable to build toward some solution - were what the woman hated the most. Coincidentally, such things were exactly what a Guild leader was faced with circumventing constantly.

"The Yecine and other large families like them are dying. Not quickly... and not in a way that I expect that anyone would mourn publicly. Especially considering the corruption that such a situation breeds."

Flourishing her hand between them, a little illusion was called into being. Oscillating, glowing rings that grew inside of a series of semi-transparent bubbles. They made it to the edges at different rates, but all of them eventually did the same thing - strained against the confinement until flares of the rings passed out. Dividing the glow into amounts that ’attacked’ bubbles beside like they were attempting to devour them... and spots that simply sat contentedly at the limiting edge.

"To put it simply, relevance for them as leading entities has been eroding at a notable scale for at least a century. For they have passed what I estimate as the safe magnitude that continental cultivation understanding can sustain, in an organization of their size. The corrupt faction being exposed accelerated it in that family in particular."

No matter how much one glow of ’growth’ and ’momentum’ pushed and pulled at the other bubbles... the sizes of the container never changed all that much throughout the display of advanced calculations. Because without an understanding of spiritual growth, there was always going to be a hard limit. Whether that form came from a drastically slowed speed of continued Physical and Essence energy growth - or the literal barrier of the Three Trials that would cap cultivators at Peak Breacher in those two fields.

"Anper running amok is sadly the least of their worries. Only a symptom of the problem. Not that it excuses him. Now, with part of that out of the way, you asked for details. Do you trust me to share them a way that doesn’t require so much speaking? I love the sound of my own voice, but it has been in use quite a bit already today."

For a brief moment, Elua’s mind drifted to the time spent with Qat... and for that same brief moment, Yatrel felt the goofy, ’satisfied lust’ that leaked out of her eldest’s spiritual control. Whether it was intentional or not didn’t change the fact that she would choose to ignore it. The Earth cultivator simply reached out for the not-really-there rock with its oil-sheen suddenly on her desk... a way of agreeing to the link with the spiritualist that she’d done once before.

Even if the Breacher illusionist didn’t *really* require it to get past her mental defenses, to share the ’fun’ Memory of how she more bodily got past the Yecine after elementally getting past their first barrier. Which the duelist was later adamant that she did *not* snicker about out loud, repeatedly, as her daughter’s dance through their ranks played out in relatively ’real’ time... and then once slower - and once faster - thanks to a trying not to smile too hard request.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Yatrel closed the study door again, after thanking and seeing off the servant who had just brought them drinks. Truthfully, she was always just a little suspicious when any of them said they were sent to her by Ondua. Not because he couldn’t be very thoughtful like that... but because part of her was still the same possessive young girl that always wondered... what he was off *doing* that was *so important* he couldn’t decide to intrude in and bring her a refreshment *himself*!

"Now that I know what you’ve done, I’m pretty confident that I can spin what social allies we have into limiting the effect on our lives. I have the details I need to make them pay if they insist on claiming more damage than was done. And I have a slightly different read on the Patriarch than I did before."

Placing the tray of snacks on the desk and leaning on the arm of Elua’s chair, her hand drifted over and fixed brown hair that didn’t need any actual fixing. Before patting a cheek that she was sure had as much of a hard time of things as a good time of them today.

"However, I still don’t think you’ve told me your expectation from here forward. Though I suspect it has something to do with your comparative assertion that they are ’dying’."

"Frankly, I’m not sure what I expected entirely. Yet, I’m prepared to adjust my plans to their reaction."

"That’s not good enough, Elua."

"Come on, mom... you know the chance to be theatrical and be ’stopped’ by Qat was two-thirds of the final part of that whole affair. But I guess if I had to pinpoint it..."

Grabbing for a cookie, one with a little dimple that had been carefully filled with a dob of honey, the young woman took a sip of her hot tea before licking off the addition to the treat. Consuming only the ’best’ part wasn’t entirely meant to be a dramatic metaphor, but she could recognize it in hindsight.

"Letting them fade into a quiet decline, after the person I love the most had such hopes for the great institution they could have someday been again, did not sit that well with me. Neither should it sit well with them. I’ll never let it. So they will find a way to be genuinely content in their bubble-"

The rest of the baked good crumbled under her teeth - and she took her time enjoying it as an illusion of herself, in her Silver dress rather than the white, split off and spun in a dance-like motion. Smiling, but not in her mint eyes. Bowing, but with more ’threat’ behind it than ’respect’, as brunette hair slid past her ears. When it spoke, it didn’t use Elua’s current voice.

"Or I will show them that falling empires are sometimes replaced. By far more impressive ones. When the signs of weakness become so apparent that they can no longer be hidden from its hungry competitors. Even should the one eyeing them be a single unaffiliated Ogre."

...It used a replica of the Acid Tongued Villainess, the late Uvraneht’s. Who had quite intentionally toppled or otherwise changed the governance for more than one literal kingdom ’simply’ because of events surrounding her chosen partner. Which was quite a bit harder than taking responsibility over a family of *only* so many thousands to manage, altogether.

Something that her Qat was already proving quite capable of, openly, as Warden Patrician of a territory almost as large as her former family’s entire holdings.