Chapter 583: Chapter 583 - Steel Breaks Where Backs Never Bent, Which Of The Two Needs Reforged I Wonder?

A man’s voice was finishing a sentence inside the room when they made it there, one that the youngest daughter of the house didn’t exactly recognize. Calm and low, holding a cadence to it of someone choosing his phrasing while he spoke. Navuill er Yecine had always been pretty good at choosing his words - thanks to his Empathic experiences - but while he had been trusted plenty by the Ironclad Order with liaison adjacent work... this was the first time he would be doing anything similar as the leader of the family.

"-the whole story. Your wife still broke eight of our family swords. Old ones, many forged a century ago and used in multiple invasions. Even Lirades was a bit upset at that fact."

A long pause entered the Goltbred house as the man weighed what he needed to say versus what he wanted to say... versus what would be easiest to say (or not). The weight of the institutions he held a sense of duty and responsibility towards had always felt quite pressing on his shoulders, even before he became a junior elder. Shooting from that lower leadership role to Patriarch in three years had hardly been part of his life plan.

However, he had learned on the battlefield that plans and training were one thing - and stepping up to handle evolving situations was most certainly another. Despite being quite solid in her ancient beliefs, youthful reactions, and of course the one thing she actually cared most about...Elua er Goltbred - or at least the result of people interacting with her - was essentially an *always evolving situation*.

"I can order that to be ignored by everyone, with my new position. Yet the bad feelings won’t just go away on their own, Qatrand."

Onya’s hands moved, tightening on her sister’s hair as they walked through the doorway. Surprised as much by the connections she was making, in the words she just heard spoken... as the fact that she actually *could* move her bound hands and grip her sister’s brown locks. Elua herself was unhurried despite that ’lapse’, treating this entry as returning to a conversation she had every right to be in. She also had every intention to greet her husband-wife’s second best blood related cousin - third if you not only counted Talva, but also included Rezzue by marriage.

"...Did you snap them in half with your fingers, like the stone a bit ago?"

But she had not yet opened her mouth when the small voice from above her head spoke first, correctly surmising that the ’your wife’ in this situation could be no one other than Elua herself. Two raven haired cultivators turned to face the new participants, Qat having adopted a more formal approach to the current matter for the time being. Pigeon blue eyes met those ’mintdrop’ eyes of her wife, serving as part of the nickname’s origin, and judged her to look and *feel* surprisingly out of sorts with such a quick-tongued kid perched on her shoulders.

"No. A little more complicated than that. I was told."

The swordswoman answered for her spouse, while easing up a slight bit on the tendrils of spirit... that had been wrapped fairly continuously around the little artisan. Ever since stepping away from the guestroom they’d slept the night in. Feeling at a distance as the heiress paced her old room, spent quality time with Rezzue, and then this little bit with her sister as they came this way had actually made it *quite* hard to maintain her darkened hair color. Thankfully - or so Qat felt - the entire nature of catching up with Navuill as a representative of the Yecine had kept things on track.

"Ah! You’re going all blonde again. Is all the important talk over?"

"No, it’s not. But it’s hard to stay completely serious with the two of you here."

"Oh. Sorry?"

Standing to his feet and providing a light salute, the man whose own mind was more than half on his three children... rather than the talk of business between families, let his steely gray eyes meet those of the apologetic Onya. All while keeping his Astralism’s active state carefully tucked away. For one did not ’threaten’ the cub when the bigger, badder relative of that sort of *creature* was in view - even if his probing Empath Aspect would have merely been more out of curiosity than spiritual attack. He obviously mostly wanted to assess her emotions while being bound at the hands...

"We’ve had plenty of time to catch up and discuss things. Besides, I am a visitor here in your home. If our talk needed to remain uninterrupted by the members of this house, we would have taken it to a different location."

"He’s kind of stiff but a good person, huh?"

Leaning over to look at the side of Elua’s face, the young girl spoke her mind without any care. It was not as if she lacked the Goltbred family’s early forms of etiquette lessons, mostly delivered through Aurehl’s attempts to instill proper young socialite behavior, but Yatrel had realized quite early on... that her second daughter was just as ’sweet’ and innocent as her first had always pretended to be. Which is to say that the looks on her face - or the instincts to immediately say things - were all but completely without a lock having anywhere at all to attach to!

’Really reminds me of dad... well meaning, but full of ambling friendly energy of their own pace. Cute.’

"Yes. I believe he counts... as good. Rather, Qat and Rezzue believe it so I am inclined to accept their opinion."

"He is! I can tell too."

"Then it seems I am outnumbered, but I think I’ll still insist on remaining undecided over it. After all, there are quite a number of people that will be relying on the new father... and the new leader of the Yecine family."

First chuckling while pushing back the overexcited little cultivator almost falling off her shoulders to insist on the matter, the reincarnator finally turned her gaze onto Navuill as she spoke. Considering she was going to be barging into the room, she had already started listening in again in order to be properly caught up. And a handful of phrases had already clued her in on what that ’new position’ of his was.

"I can hope for him to remain an ally to the people I care for and expect that he will succeed, but only time will tell. And I do not mind at all. Serving as the highly neutral until provoked party, in all matters going forward."

Gray met mint without flinching or quivering, reminding her a surprising amount of the now former Patriarch that had stood firm against her. It caused her to smile - a soft kind that actually *did* make him shiver visibly if only from the ease with which she just switched from a cool ’indifference’ hiding her ’rage’ into what appeared to be an almost different person. One that stepped lightly over and kissed her fortress on the back of the swordswoman’s hand.

"I will not remake those men’s swords, dear. However, if the matter is to be settled I can arrange to provide a fresh eight heavy blades as a sign of good will. The caveat to that for my own spite to be sated must be that they are never wielded by those people - or any *direct* relations by two generations. Does that seem fair to you, or am I being outrageous?"

"That-"

Pressing her index over her husband-wife’s responding lips, she turned her instantly smug face instead to the cousin. A man that had come here for something far more important than settling the matters of *other* people. Something inside her really wanted to get this over with so he could return to the triplets... and she was realizing it was not just that she would prefer more private time with Qatrand.

"That last question should be answered by you, Nav. Because I will do whatever my Qat instructs, but no matter how attached she remains to some of the core ideals, the Yecine clearly had their own way of things that differed from her preferences. So I need to hear what is acceptable in the eyes of their new ’guardian’. If you do not mind."

"...Please do not call me that nickname."

"Guardian as the translation of your name? Or Nav, shortened for the mere affectation of it?"

Only giving her a suffering look for the question, as if it should be completely obvious to anyone that it was the latter, he cleared his throat before responding formally. It was pointless to get hung up on the details after all. Especially with an opponent that would take glee in you being rattled by anything!

"The other matter sounds acceptable. I won’t demand a time frame on their replacement, though handing over even a single one as soon as you can will show most of the members of my family that you are as sincere in your positive promises as your negative retributions."

He tried to ignore that, as he spoke, the heiress in her brown dressing gown stepped over and sat down on the blonde’s black-panted thigh. He’d honestly never seen a sitting tower of three people before. Even the young girl, an unintentional participant in what was happening, seemed a bit unsettled by the matter of sitting on someone’s shoulders that was sitting on someone else.

Of course, that was mostly because she would rather be sitting in Elua’s lap... or that perhaps both she and her sister could be held by the tall sister-in-law. Her favorite person may be, rather inexplicably, the eldest daughter of her family she spent such a limited time with. However, the eldest ’son’ that loved person was married to would be high on her list of favorites - if she actually kept one of those, like El did!

"Also, while it will remain a small disgrace to display their ruined blades instead of reforging them, I personally think it is important that we remind ourselves of it. To not hide what happened. So, I think I will have that done when I return."

"Hmm? And why is that?"

The ’amusement’ pressing down around him was just a bit insulting, outside of being terrifying. He’d known for a long while that she was stronger than him - in all sorts of ways - but he fully understood now that she was essentially at the *peak* of a realm most never attain. At least he knew that the fabled Breacher was true in spiritual energy... though he suspected that was not all. And would later learn from his talkative wife that it ’definitely’ was not.

"Because it shows us that even things with a fine history to them can be taken down the wrong paths. And serves as an optimistic reminder that fate, though worked through the actions of others, will right those wrongs in order to be lessons for future generations. Even if the current ones never learn them."

"Hm. That’s not bad. Reframing a clear loss as a teaching moment, instead of as something simply shameful, will give your people something to hold onto besides their bitterness. That is sort of what I was thinking with the play I had prepared, during the last pre-Descent competition."

The acknowledgment came with a small nod from the brunette, as the reddish-blonde child seemed to be figuring out if she was *allowed* to crawl down from the set of shoulders. Or more importantly, how to do that without falling - as her hands were still quite bound. All of her reactions really tempted the Empath into reading her state of mind, especially as a father starting to panic a bit about the possibility of raising three girls that would some day be this exact age and possibly this exact level of energetic.

He would *almost* rather fight three copies of the former Patriarch at once, all day...

- - - - -

~Life TMI From Your Wonderful Author In AT Below~

...But before then...

Sharing this private thing is not for seeking pity or gain, whether specific or generic. Honestly it kind of makes me sick to my stomach because I’m not a Serious Thing sharer.

As evidenced by going on a year of silence on the matter. I like my privacy.

But I also simply feel it would maybe make me feel lighter (catharsis?), if my *dedicated readers* up to here at least know that I’m not just flaking on the finish without cause.

Mum’s the word, though, eh?

Consider all this a private convo~

Of course, I’m going to broad stroke some explanation here and be a lot less poetic than I’ve described it to the few people I’ve talked to about it.

So yeah... that still means it might trigger, so only read on in the AT if you are in a place/mood that is okay with a downer Real Life moment~