Your offer boils down to this: desecrate Sarapis' grotto, enslave the Tsol'aa to dig your canal, then drown them when your ledger says "done." That is not negotiation; it is banditry in ceremonial dress.

Taelle stripped you bare with a single page. The rest of us merely note the stench. You cloak cowardice in bureaucracy, cruelty in policy. A lion that feeds on paperwork and threats is no lion at all, just a scavenger fattening on what real fighters win.

The Aalen will not be your workcamp. Continue to come for us with shovels or soldiers; either way, you'll leave with fewer than you arrived.

And should Cyrene ever find a conscience again, it will begin by throwing you over its walls.

- King Tu'eras

Penned by my hand on the 25th of Chronos, in the year 992 AF.