The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 547 - The Way I See The Way You See The Way Things Are

The door to the council of elder’s meeting chamber was *not* the estate’s main gate. It was heavy, old, and well-maintained, but lacked any sort of extra defenses - because they never expected it would ever be needed to barricade themselves within the room. It was also unlocked... and hinged to open inwards. Which was perhaps somewhat fortunate for the cultivator who had just used his Astralism on his own guard partner.

’Put him to sleep before he could make his choice. Kind of an unwinnable situation, I guess. He must have known what his own family member would pick, but...’

When someone pissed off gives you an ultimatum, and you *intentionally* go out of your way to work around it - that is rarely the end of the situation. At that point, you have simply doubled down on allowing your enemy to see you as a threat by showing off your unwillingness to compromise and willingness to seek maximum resistance. Revealing the iron in your spine to them, in this case...

Before that very back was rammed into a solid door with a tossing palm strike to the chest. Mixed with a jet blast of ’Air’ that snuffed out the nearby corridor torches and ruffled every tapestry, banner, and loose article of clothing inside the room past the corridor. While the old guard slid and tumbled along the stone right into the middle of the large group of cultivators who led this family, a few soft barefoot steps took Elua to the threshold.

There, she paused, mint eyes locked onto the current Patriarch while ignoring everyone who reached for their weapons. He was someone who did not own one of the marks she’d originally left on some of the others, but a man who definitely no longer had her respect. Her Qat had not left out details about how things went down... both because as spouses that was just their way.

And because, as El felt, she was trying to tempt her into coming back home by showing she was being bullied!

Curtsying low at the threshold, only removing her eyes from his for the briefest moment before rising again, she waited a half-dozen heartbeats more to see if someone else would speak first. But those standing ready, those still seated at side tables rallying their essence, and especially the weary old man leaning with one arm on his floor-planted blade... just watched her theatrical entrance like they were waiting.

Because most all of them knew the feel of that terrifying spiritual energy from the pre-invasion competition years ago. The one that expressed itself like the room had been filled with the most stifling, tropically humid summer day in its cloying thickness, but also ignored the boundaries of their bodies to chill their insides directly like a stiff winter gale. Men who had fought rare beasts, numerous Voidlings, and dueled other cultivators countless times across hundreds and hundreds of cumulative years.

And none of them wanted anything to do with the formerly missing witch! In fact, they really wished that they could just ignore her, like they always had with Lirades. But the few of them who had been around for some of the last eruptions from that eldest woman of the Yecine knew that opening the door by throwing the guard through was never something to be ignored, which is why the elder in charge of everyone knew-

’This is going to get worse before it gets better.’

"Elua er Goltbred, wife of Qatrand gil Yecine."

Announcing herself with voice aged up enough that the ’saccharine’, honey-like quality of her formerly fully sweet facade had been adjusted in its natural tone. Now, with a mix of sweet, strong, and spice to it that many almost felt could be compared to a wine that they were waiting for the bitter note to drop in its finish. The heiress herself, having experienced many spirits throughout her five thousand years as Uvraneht, had listened to her own voice *plenty* while ’training’ it - and had a different opinion of it than such a simple comparison.

The honey-sweet was present, though it might be more like licorice now. It did have the sophistication of something developed from grape must - or perhaps the pomace, but distilled at least twice before it rested with the complexity of sweet fennel, a punch of cassia cinnamon, and minty cardamom. In other words, she considered her tone of voice now to be something like a nice ouzo... though she would admit it could use a certain tall glass of water added to it to make it really bloom and open up.

"It truly is a displeasure that the first thing I felt I must do on my return is have this meeting."

As it was, it was a *bit* harsh in its flavor when delivered straight... however, if there was any particular group that deserved to taste what the reborn cultivator was going to be like as a political opponent now that she had a handle on her physical state, then it would be the family that she married into. Not that she had any *legal* binding to them, with her husband-wife successfully emancipated.

"Yet, here I am. And since I *am*, allow me to demonstrate something I consider myself very good at. Better than the sigilwork that I chose to be perceived as, or the martial skill I just walked through your people with. A skill built on a mountain of experience that had led me to ignore you in favor of my beloved’s feelings about family."

She took a step into the room properly. Not toward the center, as someone addressing a large group might normally do, but the first in a slow arc that would carry her along the outer edge of the gathered men. The kind of positioning that a predator might take to see which of the herd might be abandoned for culling first.

"I am very good at seeing through the motivations of people and organizations when I put my mind to it. So let me reveal to you what I see when I look at this room, from your eyes."

Mint irises darted around the room even faster than her feet, making preparations and calculations for the people involved in her current scheme. Combining trace memories of interactions she’d been witness to in her limited experience with the Yecine adults... with the faces she already knew, from who had been marked by her spirit.

"A family that has stood for over four centuries. That is not nothing. There are nations in other parts of the world that have risen and crumbled in less time, and your name as a martial family yet endures. To you, this is as good as proof that your way of doing things works. That any tradition, held firmly enough through an accepted amount of success, becomes indistinguishable from wisdom itself."

While it could have if she was young and more upset, her tone carried no venom to it. If anything, it was the same detached voice she used when explaining the properties of a given substance to Rezzue... or the reason behind a footwork correction along with the disadvantages that needed to be minded, to the two half-siblings of her Qat. People she’d left behind the very *moment* all six souls were noted as safely back on the continent within the Goltbred estate.

"You see yourselves as a council that handles crises with appropriate severity. Fully immolating your own forces for their mistakes would be folly. The systems between families and Guilds worked as intended - and all matters were resolved to a sense of satisfaction."

Elua’s essence field had also been fiercely at work since her time at the gate, preparing some nitrogen gas close to its condensation state while keeping some pressure on it. Which in this case still left a cold kiss of near negative one-hundred fifty Celsius at a safe distance above her, that she would seal around a certain faction’s weapons. Not covering it entirely - just near the thick spot above the guard would do.

Pulled along carefully vacuumed out currents that her Illusion dressed in the guise of nothing at all. No fog or shimmer... and the men who held those blades felt nothing. Not just because cultivators had a bit better insulation than mortals thanks to physical energy, but because her control was plenty good enough to ring around eight different blades without allowing anything but the thermal energy stolen from the metal to filter through.

"Though it cost you one person of hard to define value, it retained your numbers to a higher degree than infighting ever would. And competent numbers, not unfathomable Heroes, were how your founders expected you to retain your heavy-blade dominance."

A few of them shifted where they stood or sat. Not because the words were wrong, but because hearing their own reasoning - and that of the Patriarch - delivered back to them by someone who had not been present for those meetings... she was not *guessing*, she had clearly either heard quotes or deduced things just as she claimed.

"A young woman with a complicated past, with plenty of reason to find fault with the status quo... remaining in a culture that keeps their women cloistered for the sake of hoarding resources towards the male cultivators every Descent cycle. Well, that is merely a loss of something you invested in that failed to mature to your satisfaction."

Her path had carried her past three of the marked men already. None of them had noticed the grip of pressure on their weapons. Or how the gradient of density changed back to normal atmospheric levels, once the core of the metal had been chilled to brittle state. There was no point wasting extra essence when all she needed to do was keep it from warming up too soon.

Besides, using her spirit to silence the squeals of bonds shifting and tearing in the items against dozens of men in the room was... already plenty of effort, when combined with keeping anyone from noticing the frost climbing along grain boundaries, inclusions, and every microscopic flaw in the metallurgy.

"Losing one heir is no different than any other, and there is a reason you raise up multiple within each cohort. War is not without casualties. And blades that *break* before they could be *wielded* for the purpose you’d honed it toward are just part of the business of handling a legacy as large, important, and necessary as the Yecine."

Her lecturing tone was beginning to take hits as her seriousness began to fade. The mischief she was about to commit was so great she almost wished her Qat would make it all this way to see it as it happened. To see her accomplishing so many things at once that she almost wanted to pause and crow a melodious tune until she arrived.

"Which relates to family rules on timing and permission to bear children. They exist for a reason, when resources are as important to stretch between so many potential junior elders... and so many senior ones who have lost their momentum but still pine for heights they’ll never reach. And reasons are what reasonable men follow, right?"

Elua stopped with a slight twirl, having completed the circuit of the room once in her Silver dress that some of them had recognized... the essential meaning of. Few would definitively say it was the same dress, with all its adjustments, but the Patriarch in particular knew that it must be. Because she was clearly-

"Insane people never have their own set of rules and reasons, do they? No, no, clearly they only ever act along a certain whimsy that they may never learn from. Which is different from what the Yecine do. Yes. Very different."

A beat of silence held the whole room after she *giggled*, like a breath sucked in before a plunge into deep water. Or perhaps the hissing gasp of breath taken when you realize the snake has its constriction fully around you. Coiled tight, like serpents do. Like mad, dangerous ancient cultivators did.