It was anarchy out there.
Thanks to my action, it was our time.

             Five months after Viteu retook Arene, Pymura Feren had died at the age of eighty-three, with little Juren by her side. Her passing was not a peaceful one: it was filled with the agony of her last illness and the pain she had felt for over two decades. Twenty-two years ago, Alan had told her about Irenes death and the truth about what happened to Valea.

          It was as though he had slapped Pymura in the face with the news. She had liked her son-in-law, and she interpreted the murder of two of her daughters (and lying about it) as a doubly vicious betrayal. At the age of sixty-one, the mild widows vision was clouded by red hatred for the first time. Such feelings had appalled Pymura, and she did not know what to do with them; like Viteu, she was not naturally vindictive. She decided to tell Juren the truth, as he would eventually be able to avenge his mother and aunt, and did so on her deathbed. Her final words were:

         You feel betrayed now, but do not confront him yet. Preserve your feelings, let them collect and stew. Then, when you are old and strong enough to take the throne, confront your father with the truth. Watch the colour drain from his face, and see the pain that will inevitably show in those eyes of his. Then, dont even hesitate. You will be representing not just yourself, but all of his victims, living and dead. Make him suffer, drive him mad. Take your time with his death, and make it as slow and torturous as it can be. Make him feel the pain of his victims, and have your hateful eyes be the last thing he sees.

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         That was in 1108. He was strong enough in 1129. At the age of seventeen (he matured almost three times slower than a purebred human,) Juren Maren II already had a reputation as a skilled swordsman. Decades of training, combined with the natural talent of his forefathers and the great Amera, made him a force to be truly reckoned with on the battlefield. With a combination of force and finesse, he dispatched the enemy and, alongside his sister Jurea (1078-1231), led Nureas army to victory after victory. The two jointly bore the mantle of High General, as their father no longer trusted himself with a sword.

         While quiet Juren respected life and had an aptitude for politics as well as for war, Jurea was a violent tactician who seemed to thrive on the deaths of her enemies. Because of the polarising differences between the two, as well as the profound love for Nurea that they shared, the arrangement worked out quite nicely, with Jurens sensitivity balancing out his sisters bellecism and vice versa. Indeed, Juren was quite sensitive, though he tried to conceal this fact in battle to a certain degree of success. Like his ancestor Ifer I, murder was second nature for him, but this was a thing he regretted. It was with a heavy heart that Juren went to his fathers bedroom in order to confront him.

         He did not barge into the room, light brown hair flying as Pymura might have pictured him doing; instead, he looked unsure of himself as he knocked on the door, sword in hand. It was a sword that Ifer had given Juren when he became a High General; as it was the one that hed used to kill Valea, Ifer wanted his son to have it melted. Juren, of course, did not understand why he wanted this, and he did not want to destroy a perfectly good sword, so he used it in battle. Ifer II was very surprised to see the look on his sons face as he opened the door. Why did he look guilty, almost regretful? He knew right from the start that there was something terribly wrong. His wife, Tèrette, sensed an unfriendly aura coming from her stepson, and moved to the back of the room, where she could watch the scene play out, hidden by the shadows.

          An inquisitive woman, her curiosity was aroused. Shed noticed that Ifer was a melancholy man who wept often and had nightmares--this undoubtedly stemmed from guilt about what happened to his old wife--and an affectionate but distant father. He all but neglected her and their sons, preferring Valeas children. Did he even know her name? She doubted it; he often called her Terea instead of Tèretia, as the Nuræans pronounced it. Kind but distant, and very messed up, was Tèrettes opinion of him.  He had given up the military life, instead choosing to engross himself in Nureas other affairs. What was Juren up to? She loved him and his sisters, and knew him better than Ifer did. Still, she could not get inside the boys head. Was he asking Ifer to be more of a father to him and his siblings, as she had done many a time? No, the look on his face shot that theory dead in midair. This was much more serious. Tèrette silently prayed to Vitar, her irheru, for no bloodshed, no death.

           Juren, Ifer said. Steler is down for the night; why arent you?

           She is but a guideline, Hirnu, Juren replied, almost spitting out the Ætani word for father. There are many who stay up in the night, and sleep till midday. The Arenian Fametæ, they are a perfect example. They actually spend years training their internal clocks so that they fall asleep at sunrise.

          Tèrette noticed that Ifers hands had begun to reach for something that wasnt there, and his eye had begun to twitch at the mention of the word Arenian. She knew that he had killed almost all of the Hernals for reasons unknown; her half-uncle Vereu and at least two other Iri had taken advantage of the chaos that followed.

            Yes, but you are not a weasel like the Arenians; you have no need to hide. Of course, fametæ are not weasels. They are owls. Nocturnal like an owl, catch you in their talons like an owl. Sneak into the barrack and assassinate an entire army without getting caught or breaking a sweat. Thats what they do, Ifer told him. Juren clenched his free fist. He was digressing; this needed to stop now.

            Speaking of the Hernals.

            What? Ifer said. I didnt mention them. He knitted his eyebrows and narrowed his eyes in confusion.

             Seems you missed their Vifetu. He and the Iren Viteu fled for Fluan during the massacre, and Pymura took them in. He told her the truth.

             The words had their desired effect. Ifers wan face lost what little colour it had left. His blue eyes widened, and he let out a nervous sound. Tèrette could not tell whether it was a laugh or a cough. At any rate, she was herself nervous. What truth? she wondered. She had a feeling that Juren would answer her question, and that she would not like the answer at all.

            Youre a sick bastard, you know that? A real podex! You were the Iren, and you couldnt distinguish truths from lies! That is an essential skill to have, especially when you deal with weasels! They never tell the truth! If cousin Viteu spreads a rumour about Tèretia because you killed his family, are you going to take her into the woods, heavy with child, and kill her like you did my mother?! Are you?! Jurens eyes were as wide as Ifers, and the hate that Pymura had felt, the betrayal and pain that he felt, finally broke the surface. For twenty-one years, they stewed inside him. Only now was he boiling over.

            He looked at Ifer, who took the sword from his hand, and inspected it closely. In the twenty seconds that it took for him to say what he needed to say, Ifer seemed to have shrunken. His eyes were now vacant, and tears of remorse fell down his face as he wept. Juren thought that the tears were of self-pity. The truth was that this was the last straw for Ifer.

              He was hearing his son and heir, whom he loved more than almost anything save for his sisters, spew the truth in a hateful voice. Did Jurea and Valisa know as well? he wondered. If they did, then there was no more reason for him to live. He was fully aware of the fact that Juren had turned on him, and that he was a traitor in the eyes of his children. He would never find redemption or love in them again. Not that he deserved love, he told himself. He had loathed himself, and felt depressed for decades. The minute he stuffed Valeas body in an unmarked grave hed made in the wood where she died, he had felt guilt. He knew what Juren was going to do to him, as his last words were:

          Dont do this, Juren. I will do it for you. I killed your mother with this sword, and I might as well end myself here.

           His end, like Pymuras, was not peaceful. Ifer wanted to kill himself, but he wanted to make himself suffer greatly while doing it. He deserved not the swift mercy of Devalise, the goddess of Death, but the torture of Dervet. In his suffering, he wanted to show Juren just how sorry he felt, as mere words would not cut it. He swung the sword at his own head 326 times before it rolled onto the ground; most of the time, hed missed it deliberately. Juren knelt down beside the body, his angry tears mingling with his fathers blood.

         The next morning, Juren had held up Ifer's head and addressed the people of Nurea:

        "This head belongs to Ifer Maren II, the Iren of Nurea from 27 Tènea, 1040 to 30 Lan, 1129--the worst Iren to date. If you notice that I refuse to refer to him as 'Father,' it is because I refuse to be associated with him, let alone acknowledge the fact that he begot me and give him such an honour posthumously! I bear now his title, and as your new Iren, it is my duty to tell my kin and my people the truth, which Ifer never did.

         "He lied about the death of my mother, the late and still beloved Valea Feren. She died not at the jaws of a starving bruin, as he claimed, but at his sword. I confronted him with this fact last night, and he was too much of a coward to face the truth. He did this"--Juren gestured to the head--"to himself. Two lives at once were slaughtered by the man they trusted, and an entire bloodline nearly extinguished by the enemy gullible enough to swallow Hernal's lie and treat it like it was a truth that came straight out of the æther! The Vìntus, if I know them well, would never permit such an atrocity to even be the truth!"

           These jarring words had been the subject of mutinous muttering among the Nuræan people and his fellow Marens. Only one person spoke in a voice louder than a whisper. He asked Juren,

           "How do you know this?"

           And then Juren told the truth:

          "The late Pymura Feren told me."

           That night, several Marens who were loyal to Juren's father went to Fluan, ransacked it and killed all of the Ferens without Juren's consent, desirous of exterminating the surname that seemingly contaminated the mind of the new Iren. By inducing Ifer to kill himself, Juren Maren II was a traitor that was unworthy, in their minds, to rule over his late father's land. There was no Feren equivalent of Viteu Hernal in the slaughter: the surname died out completely, like the Ferlyns before them.

          When their work was done, they returned to Ilren. When he learned what they had done, Juren killed them all and it was said that his anguished howls were so loud that they were heard in Kantea, the Irtan capital from 738 to 1252. Proud by nature, he refused to accept the fact that by telling them that Pymura told him the truth, he had led his maternal family to their graves. However, he felt remorse for killing his father's men. After their deaths, he prostrated himself before his bed and begged the Vìntus to forgive him and to end the cycle of murder that Teren had begun. However, Muran prevented the Vìntus from hearing this prayer, and so the cycle was still very much alive.

          Irascible and depressed as he was, Ifer was popular with the people of Nurea up to his death. When Juren had held up the head of his father by the hair and said that he regretted the fact that Ifer was his father, the fat was in the fire and it would take a lot of manpower to pull it out. Ten days after Ifer died, twenty thousand of his supporters burned down Fera, one of Jurens palaces in Ilren, as they had heard a rumour that he was in there. Over three thousand people died. The few people that  supported Juren were incensed, including Jurea.

          She ordered that "any Nuræan who dares come out in the open and says that her loyalty is towards the nithing known as Ifer Amat Maren II will be drowned in the Derlan river. Anyone who rebels against the new Iren through her actions as well as her words will be punished severely, in barbaric ways that defy description. Juren and I will personally see to that. In the next few months, thirty thousand Nuræans spoke their minds and were consequently drowned. Another fifty thousand, including the ones who burnt down Fera, all suffered slow, horrific deaths. As Jurea had promised, she had had them killed in a way that was so agonising and just plain awful that no one could put into words the sheer brutality of their demise.

            Jurea's intention was to help her brother and extinguish the fire of rebellion. But all it really did was fan its flames. She wanted the barbaric deaths of eighty thousand people to strike fear into the heart of Nurea. Instead, two men, Rel Vilder [not related to Alan; lived (1098-1135)] and Kir Alder (1084-1139) who lost their relatives to Jurea and her tyranny formed a small army with the help of Nereu Maren (1102-1130), a descendant of Stel Maren. The three formed an alliance with Ireu Seral XII (1080-1150), brother of Amel IV, and together they took the city of Renkara from Juren. Rel, the ringleader and the brains behind the operation, told Jurea that they took Renkara in order to spare her from corruption. When she learned of Nereu's role in the operation, Jurea executed him. Kir and Rel went into hiding.

          All of this was too much for Juren. He felt that nothing would stop Jurea from continuing to interfere in his affairs except for one thing: marriage. He wrestled with the idea, as he did not like it. Jurea had an independent spirit, and hated being told what to do. He loved both his sisters, and it broke his heart to ship one of them off. But he was the Iren now, and his people were dying. Nurea as a whole was shrinking and wilting. If Jurea didnt stop, he would not have a country to rule, and his ancestors would consider him a disgrace when he joined them in Murn. He had to put his people first, and so he arranged for Jurea to wed Intel Derl (1098-1131,) a widower and the first cousin of Veldina II (1084-1131,) Irene of Lantene. Even though he bore the title of Eretu, or Lord, Intel had virtually no political influence due to his sex and the fact that he was only fifth in line to the Lantenean throne. As a result, Jurea, as Intels wife, would not be able to interfere in Nuræan or Lantenean politics.

          However, five months after Jurea left for the Lantenean capital of Æresa, a plague of cholera carried off twenty thousand people, including most of the Derls. Intel contracted it, and a pregnant Jurea returned to Ilren for her own safety. Juren took her under his wing on the condition that she would never interfere in his affairs again. She gave birth to twins there, and moved back to Lantene with her daughter Irintea when the plague subsided. Jurea would leave her son Kir behind with his uncle, so Juren could have an heir.

          Upon returning, she found out that Intel had ultimately died from the cholera, as well as the Irene Veldina and many of her closest relatives. The closest one was Veldinas sister, Æreta VII (1091-1150,) who had married Viteu Hernal and was in Irtera when the plague killed her sisters. However, Æreta refused to take the throne. As a result, Jurea had to rule Lantene in Irinteas name until she came of age. In 1184, she would do it again for her grandson Furte after his mothers death.

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            Without Jurea's interference, it was easier for Juren to rule Nurea. He took Renkara back in 1132, and told his people afterwards, "My sister's wishes and mine were not the same. She took matters into her own hands without discussing it with me, and stuck her sword into my people without my consent. She is a woman of action and a warlord, not a politician. I had no idea whatsoever about the impact that my display of Ifer's head would have on us. In this war, we cannot afford a schism and we certainly can't afford to continue this cycle of murder that Teren and Ifer have begun. We must be unified, and forget our paltry troubles and this eye-for-an-eye thing."

          Thus the demise of rebellion at the hands of diplomacy, not violence, and the Hernals and Ferens avenged.