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"I intend for Vale City to be a place where the human and Eldritch worlds mix," Ashlynn said.

"Like blending yellow and blue paints to make green, I intend for this city to become something unique where our two peoples can live together, side by side, learning the very best of what each people has to offer and becoming something greater than the sum of its parts," she said.

"Mother Ashlynn," Virve said awkwardly, trying to restrain her temper. The visions the Ancient Oak had given her of the Lothian’s lumber yard where they hacked apart the trunk and limbs of a sacred Ancient Oak were still fresh in her mind and the thought of letting such savages into the homeland that her people had fought so long to defend filled her with a deep sense of unease.

"Do you really think we can bring humans into the Vale on this kind of scale?" Virve asked. "How long would it be before they bring their axes and saws to chop down everything we hold dear, remaking this place in their own image?"

"Little Sister," Heila said, interrupting for the first time since Virve’s temper began to flare. As she spoke, a soothing aura that smelled faintly of willow-bark tea began to fill the carriage as Heila did her best to help the new witch calm her temper.

"Do you really think that Mother Ashlynn and Lady Nyrielle would let people get away with that?

" Heila asked gently. "Maybe humans could do it to another city where they could eat away at our world, especially if one of their Templars or Inquisitors contested to become the next Eldritch Lord. But Lady Nyrielle and Mother Ashlynn won’t wither away and leave the Vale behind when they grow old. They’ll be here to protect it for as long as the Vale of Mists stands. "

Suddenly, the carriage grew quiet as Heila reminded them of something that all of them knew but few of them spent much time thinking about.

Even though they had become witches and would live decades longer than they would have without the seeds of witchcraft that Ashlynn had planted in each of their chests, all of them would eventually grow old and die.

Ashlynn, however, would endure in this world as long as Lady Nyrielle did, and the Eldritch Lady of the Vale of Mists was already more than two centuries old.

"All of this," Ollie said as understanding dawned on him. "You aren’t doing this for the world we’ll live in after the war ends. You’re thinking about the Vale of Mists when the children and grandchildren of the people who are alive now are living here.

.. that’s what you’re having all of this built for, isn’t it? "

"I don’t know how long it will take," Ashlynn said quietly as the carriage finally trundled through the gates of the ancient fortress itself. "Some change, like the fall of the Vale of Mists in Cellach Lothian’s era, comes suddenly. Others take years, decades, even generations. I don’t know how to see that far in the future. "

"But Nyri and I have been speaking since our reunion in High Fen City," she continued. "It does us no good to win yet another defensive victory in a string of endless wars. We need to put an end to this in a way that endures for generations to come."

"That’s why she raised such a large and powerful army," Virve said as realization dawned on her.

"Sir Savis and Sir Tausau’s forces can both be considered elite soldiers, the likes of which few in the Vale of Mists could match, and there are others like the Sorcerers of Sundered Earth who even High Lords beyond the mountains know to fear. "

"She doesn’t intend to crush the Lothians at our borders... she intends to take the war to their doorstep," Virve said, silently impressed as she imagined the scale of it.

"Mistress Nyrielle knows her role well," Ashlynn said with a trace of sadness in her voice. "She knows more about bringing death to a people than almost anyone in the world, and she no longer intends to restrain herself in the war to come."

Previously, Nyrielle had been afraid that unleashing her full power would provoke the human Church into starting a crusade that she couldn’t hope to win against. If she terrified the Church too much, the forces they would martial against her would be far beyond what she and her handful of human progeny could hope to repel.

But now that the war was coming anyway, she no longer saw a reason to restrain herself in bringing death to her human enemies.

"Mistress Nyrielle knows too much about death, but not enough about nurturing life," Ashlynn said softly. "That’s why it’s up to us to balance the power of death within the Vale of Mists. We can’t just destroy our enemies, we have to build something else on top of the rubble of war.

.. or none of it will be worth the sacrifices that so many people have made for so many years. "

"That’s why," she said, taking a moment to look at each of her witches in turn. "That’s why I need your help, not just to win the war, but to transform the Vale of Mists into a place that people will want to live. We can’t become a land of darkness and death with strength that makes the world fear us.

We have to be a place of growth and prosperity where people will want to raise their children instead of a place they fear and fight to protect their children from. "

"I know it will be hard to put down old hurts," Ashlynn said, leaning across the carriage to take one of Virve’s massive paws in her hands.

"And I won’t ask you to forsake your vengeance.

I intend to take my own as well," she said, her voice hardening as she spoke.

"Owain Lothian will die a painful death, and so will the people who betrayed my family’s trust to tell him about my mark. "

"But after that," Ashlynn said as she gently stroked the Oak Witch’s fur. "After we’ve reaped the lives of the people who are responsible for the tragedies that must be avenged... I hope that you and I can both put down the hatred in our hearts to build something for the future."

"I’ll help," Heila said, reaching out to add her diminutive hands to Ashlyn’s, clutching tightly at Virve’s paw and looking at the taller witch with shining eyes. "I’m smaller and younger, but when it comes to healing, when you’re ready, I can help, just like I helped Sir Ignatious," she said.

"I’ll help too," Ollie said, adding his hands on top of Heila’s.

"I, I may not understand as much about vengeance and what everyone has suffered," he said, thinking back to his own recent trial. He’d gotten a taste of the pain that people like Milo, Old Nan, and the rest of the refugees had suffered, but in the end, it hadn’t been real.

He was able to wake from the nightmare of the trial, but the people who had actually suffered and lost loved ones could only continue living the lives they had.

"But I promise to help build a future for everyone," he said firmly. "One where sister Virve can rest and raise her children in peace after the fighting is done."

"Hey, brat!" Virve said, suddenly flustered by the attention. Reaching out with her free paw, she gave Ollie a gentle smack across his shoulders before giving him a slightly embarrassed look. "Whoever said I’d be raising children? Huh? Do you see me with a man to give me children? Or are you offering to be the father to these children you think I’m going to be raising in the future? "

"What? No, I, I didn’t... wait!" Ollie said, taken off guard by the sudden change in Virve’s tone.

Virve, however, responded with a hearty, body-shaking belly laugh that was soon followed by everyone else in the carriage.

All of this talk of the future and forgiving the humans who were supposedly ’blameless’ had placed a great weight on her heart, and she wasn’t entirely sure she believed that things could work out as well in the end as Ashlynn believed. ..

But those problems belonged to a distant future, one that she might not even be alive to witness.

Since that was the case, there was no reason to allow it to become a seed of discord in their newly forming little family.

She could leave that worry to Mother Ashlynn.

As long as she was able to avenge her father, extracting the blood debt owed to her by Bors Lothian, and as long as she could recover what remained of the butchered Ancient Oak. .. nothing else really mattered.

"Come now, Big Brother Ollie," Virve teased, smiling broadly at the awkward young knight as she stepped out of the carriage and held out her arms. "Let me carry you up to bed. But if you think I’m going to help you start siring children, you have another thing coming!"