The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 464 - Wedding Schemes & Solicitations, Watershed Moment Revelations

The length of Silver cord gleamed brightest of all the metal there, with its fresh sigil work refining the intent behind the mysterious symbols that had surprised her at her own wedding. Deliberate inscriptions had been crafted with full understanding of their... *intended* purpose. Elua wrapped it around their wrists with a reverence for the ritual moment, if not the individual that may already be peeking in on the affair.

"The Argent Braid Fellowship version you brought me was not good enough to deign to use for her very... particular Mandate. This object now carries the completed Connection ritual of the Silver Divinity herself. It will be part of your Union."

When you handled a relic meant to poke at and bug someone who had pushed past the Peak of the Upper Realm - especially when you were only guessing that the Guild that had formed to pursue her interests had gotten a few things *wrong* as time went by - you did so while being ’prepared’ for the consequences. Which was why her spiritual sense was already on high alert for the moment anything that *may* be a little too stimulating for a ’solemn’ event started to happen. However, that did not mean she could focus entirely on that and ignore her duties.

"Nohre, Fusand hez Talcres - you stand before witnesses who have walked this path successfully. In a place built specifically to celebrate the commitment you make together today. I say this not to turn focus to me and what I prepared, but in proof of the weight of your own lives. This exists none other than because you do. None other than because you were drawn to each other."

Intoning ceremonial weight into her words, which were rather all her own instead of the traditional, formulaic phrases popularized on the Continent for weddings. She wasn’t speaking as their friend or teacher now, but as someone drawing upon her multiple millennia of prior experience with life’s failures and successes, heartbreaks and fulfillments - and most of all with the honest desire to see their own experience have a net positive.

"I want you to understand something. Love is simpler than most people realize... and that makes it one of the easiest things to overlook in your life - and leads to the rarity of it lasting as long as you may expect right now. It flows like a nourishing rain through dry mountain channels at the most obvious of times."

On their wrists, the metal was warmer than it should be. Not burning, but certainly not the temperature of metal on a recently dawned morning. It was the first sign to Elua that someone was paying attention - the air around them and the Gaseous Manipulation she defended them with being tampered with. Quickly followed by a few more signs that she willfully ignored to do her requested job.

"However, if the land does not release as much of that love back into the sky as regularly, then there is less and less available for your partner to return... with their clouds so emptied. Do you promise to support each other’s growth, to stand together against whatever challenges may come, and to remember to choose each other again and again as the years pass without thinking that proving it once was enough?"

"We do."

Their voices spoke in near unison, causing the Silver all around to began to glow in a rippling effect like it was tracking the sound of their vow. That same first ’pulse’ of the nosy Divinity from her own wedding, properly contained and channeled through the structure of her Element this time... instead of allowed to rattle even a bit of the water around them, like it had the mountainous coast of the continent.

"Are there any other vows you would like to make to each other while under the gazes of those who have expressed their own across ages?" 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

The pair stared into each other’s eyes for a long while. They were young, but both of them knew that adding more promises now was not necessary. For they had a whole long, long life ahead of them to make new ones to keep. And each of them would be important, even without this beautiful scene to give them gravitas. As one, they turned back to their friend, master, and officiator with very certain smiles.

"No."

"Then by the bonds you have chosen and the cord as witness that blesses your union, I pronounce you married in truth and perpetuity. You may kiss if you’d like. Or is that part unnecessary for your ceremony?"

Fusand leaned down immediately for it, but her final words made him slow and stop... for they ’moved’ as the officiator’s head turned away towards the seating. Light cascaded out from the viewing area, reflecting off the water in hectic patterns that spiraled up toward the heights of the cliff face. The illusory audience around a single figure began to fade one by one, dispersing to leave the individual resting at the carved stone railing.

Tall and radiant, with glowing white eyes and reddish-blonde hair that moved in a mysterious wind that touched nothing else. She held her cheek in her palm and smiled down with genuine delight at everything unfolding for her to see. Her other hand raised up and pet the air in a disarming manner, as if asking to be ignored.

"Kiss your bride, Fusand. You’ve earned this happiness. Do not mind me at all. Just imagine I am not here and go for it."

But of course they minded!

It would be weird enough to be talked to with those words by someone you did not know, but her *excessive* nature - even as an avatar inserted into the Astral Exclave with its high essence density - made the sound ’feel’ like a whisper and thunder through their bodies all at once. Realizing quickly she had overdone it with the theatrics, a quick wink toward Elua acknowledged her role in bringing this outcome to her attention. If only that was all she did, the heiress would have called the incident one of her better conversations with one of their kind.

But as usual, with the ancient cultivator’s brand of spirit essentially on her sleeve to cultivators like them... they knew just what buttons to push. And Elua’s biggest anchor and biggest button was clearly her relationship with her fortress. Which was something that a nosy-about-love Divinity could see quite well in the not-very-well-buried longing for a husband-wife placed in the middle of such a happy day.

"You’d like to be mature for her, but she’d like for you to be a child for yourself. Do not forget that sometimes the heaviest rainclouds crashing into the highest peaks can leave rain shadow. And recognize that for her, *you* are the high place whose arid side she is trying to drench with nourishment, Uvra-"

The platform continued to float on the dark water. Some of the glow from the Divinity’s showing also remained, for a few seconds. But the space where she had stood was emptied before she could finish uttering that *entire* ancient name. Only one person in this life had been informed of it - and Elua er Goltbred intended to keep it that way. Even if that meant forcefully shunting away an Avatar you’d pretty much invited yourself through Relic and Connection... with primitive but effective methods.

’Destroyed the sigils in layers one-twenty through three-sixteen. Broke containment field four and destructed the essence convergence in the eighty eighth grid sector of the Exclave. But I think she got the point, just like I got hers.’

She never did tell the disciples, or Zyris, that she was the one responsible for the entity’s sudden disappearance. Only explained it away as the whims of the highest form of cultivators when ’having chats’ with them. Just like Madrigil had never directly told anyone that it was the ancient Silver cultivator - who he had no positive feelings for - that broke him out of his slump.