The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 467 - Likely Ally With Unlikeable Motivations, pt1

Practice swords clanged together, the echo through the training courtyard noisesome but not unpleasant as Anper er Yecine secretly watched his sons move through their forms in a second practice. Kaland led Ajoreal, who followed a half-beat behind despite being a year younger. Their movements showed off promise to their father, with the essential footwork operating at a strong level and disciplined strikes with aggressive forward pressure that all but defined Yecine combat philosophy to outsiders.

Then Kaland changed into a defensive stance. One learned at the Youth Guild, he was sure. Blade angled to redirect rather than meet force directly. To try and outmaneuver power instead of sparring with intent to match it. After taking Ajoreal’s strike and sliding it away, the other boy mirrored him without hesitation. They traded attacks like this... and Anper’s jaw tightened in displeasure.

’That is how my daughter fights. Not how a Yecine man fights.’

However, he said nothing. Letting them continue their exercise as he plotted what to do about it. They were both learning from him, absorbing his instruction with dutiful focus multiple times a day since his house arrest. Yet, the older had picked up techniques he’d never taught them and passed them along effectively enough. Taught an ability to outlast an opponent with patience and skill.

Methods that sounded good on paper... but in practice, the man knew... most fights resolved quickly. Not ending the opponent with instant overwhelming force danced with risk. It was the very thing that let that witch of a girl, as he thought of Elua er Goltbred, to scheme around their hesitance and patience. And let that merchant walk all over them, hoping to outlast the shady practices all for the prize at the end.

The plotting had gotten him only two decades of wasted time. That was time, resources, and resolve that the cultivator knew could not be simply traded back to his sons’ lives. All of that had been sunk into his daughter’s... and to show for it? Was merely a ghost of a reflection of her in them, now. And he felt he should want to crush it.

Striding out into the private training ground with his blade drawn, the two children quickly reset themselves. Pretending as though they had not been engaged in what might have been heresy in ancient cultivator Guilds with stricter methods. That they had not been deviating from his teachings in any kind of defiance. He knew they were loyal and obedient in their hearts - and that was why he did not scold them this day.

He knew the flicker of something in Kaland’s expression when he did not speak was a question. One that they wouldn’t ask him directly, not after he spoke nearly a year ago. When he woke them for practice that morning, after driving his daughter out, and declared that Qatrand was no longer their family member. That he would not answer anything more than that on the matter. Then, as now, he silently pushed them through proper drills until their arms trembled with fatigue.

His only goal was to build them into strong men worthy of the name. Worthier than the stain his own actions and that of the faction he followed had brought upon it. Worthier than the daughter he sacrificed, over and over, including that final time as one last sacrifice against his familial enemies.

He had been patient, trying to outlast every little dishonor until the tables turned. Until the political ruse could be discarded, the tangible prizes reaped, and the distaste in his mouth for Ondua fully vindicated. And because he had not acted with the fierce aggression his duty as a heavy blade wielder of this family demanded?

He was forced by that same Yecine name to spend two more years like this. Teaching two boys to be uncompromising, while compromising at every turn. Nothing had changed. Perhaps that, more than any other reason, was why he could not demand that they stop emulating the drifts in tradition of a young woman who had proven herself unwilling to shake her own deep convictions.

Not that he thought so deeply about it.

Particularly because... he still thought those sorts of things were *planted* by a brunette girl. Despite evidence of strong ideals existing even before being introduced to the marriage partner *he* had arranged. Parts he ignored and disdained as feminine weaknesses, any time at all that she seemed to buck from control. Because he was incapable of seeing it any other way.

What had been instilled in him, that he had devoted himself to... and that had twisted in his heart was just too...

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Full dark had fallen in the estate, attendants having already spread all across the grounds to light oil in lamps produced from sheep fat in the Yecine holdings. Anper moved to the desk in his study while lighting his own, his Smoke Element collecting and directing the emissions away from his things and out the small window at the top of the wall behind him. Reviewing his limited correspondence, checking duplicate reports from both Guild and family business he could no longer visit in person, and of course planning the training regimen for tomorrow.

That was how he spent every night, religiously, for he knew the house arrest would end eventually. Keeping abreast of everything in the way he had always done was a comfort and a purpose that he endured every day without complaint. Just like training his children. A proud man surrounded by former allies and current enemies could do no less. At least, that was one cultivator’s assessment of how he looked sitting in that chair.

"You collected quite a library for your confinement."

The voice from the shadows near his bookshelf made Anper’s hand move to his heavy sword. Drawing the blade propped against the desk, pivoting in one clean motion as he surged to his feet and kicked the chair in the direction behind him. His sword sang a silent crescendo... muted through empty Air and the Smoke launched wildly into the room.

Cloaked with a dark fur covering, the woman that had spoken only moved three rapid paces to avoid the crash of chair and unhesitating strike. Not as though scrambling or panicking, but as if she’d anticipated what would happen before he’d acted. Considering the Yecine were a well known group of fighters with reliable patterns, expecting *an* assault was not out of the question. But evading it successfully was another matter.

"A waste of effort. I didn’t come to fight."

Keeping his blade raised, steel gray eyes tracked her new position which had not twinged his Danger Astralism at all. However, that only meant that what she said may be true. That she was either not directing bloodlust at him or that she was too weak to be a threat. But getting this far into their household almost certainly meant she was no ordinary cultivator.

"State your business before I call the guards."

"Servants are avoiding this place and I could be gone before guards arrive regardless. Lets not make this about threatening each other. I’m here about Teovar."

She pulled back her hood, revealing a young woman’s face that he’d seen before. A Shadow Whisker Sorority member with sharp eyes that had seen too much. Courier, scout, and known to take side contracts in private... even if it had connections to black market deals. Sevra was as shady to polite society as any hunted merchant, even if the name she spoke of settled more coldly in his chest than any recognition...

Of this *woman*.