NOVEL NEXT Chapter 114 – The Woes of a Mongrel
"Throughout history, people have always viewed others who were different from themselves with suspicion, and oftentimes, outright hostility. Nowhere was this more evident than in western Ur-Teros, where therians formed the majority of the populace by a long shot.
Whereas most races had subraces that looked slightly different, they were generally still easily recognizable as the same race. For therians, the different breeds could be utterly diverse, to the point of looking like entirely different races altogether. Couples formed between different therian breeds were generally discouraged, as most of them are generally unable to bear children, with only those of closely related breeds able of doing so. Even then, these mongrel children were often looked down upon for they often had issues of their own." - Avenir Ainsworth, Historian from the First Elmaiya Empire.
Artair deVreys was happy. It was a feeling he didn't have often, growing up as he was in the household of Dux Illyvich Veros, where while every need was provided for, affection was few and far between. Genuine affection, much less so.
Oh, the Dux was not a bad father by all accounts, Artair would say, even if he had chosen to take his mother's surname. Illyvich Veros was a hard, ruthless man, even if he was a gentleman at the same time. Even so, he was fair to everyone, and handed down rewards and punishment to match their recipients.
As a father he was a harsh mentor to his children, though a fair one. Artair and his half siblings had not loved the man, but they respected him greatly. The man had a ruthless streak which showed often, but never went overboard with it. His children had the best tutors and treatments available, even if the way they were raised was far harsher than what children of much lower nobility enjoyed.
After he grew older, Artair had understood why his father trained his children so harshly. His father was well aware of the ugliness behind the glamor that enveloped the world of nobility, having risen to his position as one of the few Duxes of the empire from an illegitimate bastard. If stories were to be believed, the Dux has "removed" all of his many other half-siblings, leaving himself as the sole heir to the title when his father passed away prematurely in his forties.
As for Artair himself, he was content with just being able to live his life, even if his mother's "arrangements" early on had distracted him quite a lot from the pursuit of knowledge he loved so much. Fortunately that all stopped after the disaster that was his first long term relationship with a woman back then.
Mongrels - what therians usually called those whose parents are of different breeds to each other - like him were often rather ostracized in therian society. The reason for that, was less snobbery or a belief in keeping the blood pure or anything, and no discrimination were given to childrens of therians and other races. It was a more practical one, as couples formed by different breeds of therians rarely managed to bear children, and of those few who do manage to bear children, over half of them tend to be born with defects of some sort.
Infertility was one of the most common defects for such mongrel children, though the Dux was fortunate enough to avoid that fate. Artair and his elder half sister - born from a different concubine of the Dux - were not as lucky, and when they found out that he was unable to have children, it had simultaneously crashed the relationship he currently had with a minor noble's daughter - one his mother had insisted he pursue in the hopes of taking over the minor house with their own name - and his mother's ambitions to revive their name as a noble house.
Artair was aware that his mother had affairs in the few years between that discovery and her falling ill to the plague in the hopes of siring another of their name, but never had any luck with it, and only caused his father to treat her coldly because of it.
Even so, Artair knew that his father still cared for him regardless when he had most of his children evacuate to other lands after the civil war grew to greater proportions and approached their lands. Artair's eldest half brother and sister, the ones born from his father's legal wife, had chosen to stay and ride the tides of fortune with their parents. His other half siblings were sent with their mothers to their ancestral homes in the western isles and the Jarldoms, while since his mother had passed away to the plague by then, the Dux had some trusted men escort Artair to Ptolodecca by ship.
When they had arrived in Ptolodecca, Artair had insisted that his escorts return to the Dux and help him in the civil war instead of guarding him, a request his escorts obeyed after some reluctance. He himself politely obeyed the quarantine measures Ptolodecca had in place before he inquired about his grandfather.
To his surprise, when he did so, he was brought away to meet some cloaked men and women who asked pointed questions to him, and soon brought him to Tohrmutgent with a carriage that ran faster than any he had ever rode on in his life.
They brought him straight to a reasonably large two story house in the inner district of the large city, where Artair met his grandfather for the first time in his life. By then Myrddin deVreys was retired and half blind, his skin starting to sag and his black fur losing its gloss, interspersed with gray here and there. Even so, he merely took one sniff at Artair, before he hugged him tightly.
Artair was somewhat flabbergasted by the warm welcome and acceptance from the grandfather he had never seen before, but he knew why. For therians like them, their noses would not lie, and they would be able to identify a member of their family, even rather distant ones, just by their scent.
His relationship with his grandfather quickly grew close in the few years they had together, and Artair was amongst the mourners when his grandfather had passed away of old age some time ago. After that, he mostly remained alone, just interacting as needed with his colleagues at work, living a somewhat monotonous life.
At least… until he met Aideen Fiachna.
