Fic Update Thread 54: Find a spot out on the floor!

[Mamorien]

Threads of Destiny (OEX) 392-New Peace 3.

Cai Renxiang's brush made its final flourish as she completed her signature and straightened up. It was the second time she had laid her mark to paper, each of them marking a copy of the treaty. Jaromila finished her signatures a moment later.

"To everyone who has been part of this, I offer my most effusive thanks," Cai Renxiang addressed. "What we have set in motion here today is momentous. This, I promise."

Jaromila stepped up beside her. "The fate of the mountains, north and south, has been written here. We have set a precedent here that the Polar Nation and the Celestial Empire may coexist and live well as neighbors."

Ling Qi did not begrudge Cai Renxiang her role. She was the face of their efforts, and Ling Qi, for all her own work, was happy enough for it to be so. She was coming to terms with being a leader of sorts, the head of her clan, but this was where Cai Renxiang shone.

"Despite setbacks and disagreement, we have forged forward. Today, we show that the Emerald Seas is a united province, a strong province, one which may stand beside all others. In war and peace, I am proud of the foresight and wisdom of my people in supporting this effort. With our new neighbors, I look forward to a future of peace in the south and an end to the days of raiding and ruin."

"And we look forward to the peaceful exchange between our peoples." Jaromila made her speech in turn. "Knowledge is sharpened by knowledge. Plenty averts strife. We will see these mountains at peace, through our projects and efforts."

One way or the other, the old status quo was gone. In the flying palace city, under imperial boots, or in the warcamps of the Twelve Stars, the tribes of the mountains would change, too. The old way of endless war, tribes raiding and killing and burning settlements, armies marching out to retaliate and exterminate tribes… This, too, was ending. She would reduce the pain of it where she could, to deny the vision of the nightmares she had seen in her liminal adventure with Xuan Shi to the White Sky, but she would not stop.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21188/...ew-peace-3