The Vampire & Her Witch

Paulus glared at Nyrielle, his gray fur twitching with anger while his horn pulsed with a dark blue light. At the moment, more than anything, he wanted to sink claws of ice into the vampire’s heart for the insult of suggesting his horn would adorn a human spear, but he knew that his strength had faded too much with age to threaten an Eldritch Lady. Instead, he could only stomach his anger as Ashlynn began to address the crowd again. "You have heard that the Church is powerful and dangerous," Ashlynn said. "But let me make it clear just how much the Church can do to change the course of a war."

"Bors Lothian fought the ’War of Inches’ because he had lost much of the support his ancestors enjoyed. During the ’Brothers’ War’, Odhran and Leon were bound tightly together, unified in their desire to avenge their father," Ashlynn explained. "Odhran gave Leon much greater support than the future Marquis of Lothian would in order to raise his holy army."

"But as horrible as the Brothers’ War was, it failed to topple a single Eldritch Lord," she pointed out. "It did succeed in weakening the Vale of Mists and robbing Mistress Nyrielle of many of her progeny, but no more than that. A generation later, the War of Four Templars saw the sons of Odhran and Leon unite, not against the Vale of Mists, but against Airgead Mountain and the Southern Steppe."

At the high table, Lord Ritchel’s bushy brows furrowed when Ashlynn brought up the territories of the neighboring Eldritch Lords on the eastern side of the mountains. Much like his own ancestors, the Lord of Airgead Mountain and the High Lord of the Southern Steppe had been content to let the Lothians batter themselves against the Vale of Mists, seeing little reason to intervene in wars that weren’t their own.

It wasn’t until the war in Ritchel’s grandfather’s time that they realized how boundless the human appetite for expansion truly was. Airgead Mountain was said to be rich in gold and jewels and the Southern Steppe was both vast and fertile. Both Eldritch Lords suffered losses to the Lothians in that war that they hadn’t fully recovered from to this day.

"This is how humans see the world, Hauke," Lord Ritchel said quietly to his son. "They view maps like a fish, ready to be carved up and portioned out. If you deny them the soft belly, they will fight you for the rich back and while you are busy defending the best parts of your catch, someone else will make off with the head and tail."

"Airgead Mountain and the Southern Steppe still stand because Lady Nyrielle sends her forces to aid them, even though they never did the same for her," he said, driving the lesson home for his son. "One day, you may need to do the same for her."

Beside him, Hauke nodded solemnly, never taking his gaze off Ashlynn as he listened to her speak. The more he heard, the more questions he had and the more he looked forward to learning more from her in the next few days.

"Make no mistake," Ashlynn said. "The Lothians have realized that they cannot expand their domain without the help of the Church. Since the War of Four Templars, the past few Marquis have sought to regain some independence from the church but Bors Lothian has realized that doing so weakened their ability to fight the Eldritch Nations."

"All this time, Mistress Nyrielle has resisted the forces of Lothian March, but Bors Lothian isn’t content to make do with his own forces anymore," Ashlynn said darkly. "More than two hundred years ago, when the first humans arrived on this continent, very few of the human colonies could threaten an Eldritch Lord. Individually, they were too weak to accomplish much. That changed when the Church put their support behind a king and declared the First Crusade."