“Depending on the circumstances, even the worst of enemies might end up fighting alongside one another one day.” - Saying attributed to Xaliburnus the Conqueror, First Emperor of the Elmaiya Empire.

“Ah, there they are,” noted Iqualea as two groups of people approached the elven village from the north and south the following day. The newcomers were both mixed groups of goblins and orcs, and some hybrids thereof. They came to the elven village from their own villages further in the mountain range. Like the elves, they too asked for various things that made their lives easier like metal tools and enchanted items to be purchased out of the sales results of the goods they consigned to the human representatives to sell in the Emirate.

It was one of the reasons why Aideen visited the elven village. For one, she wanted to visit the place itself, but the fact that the elves happened to play the intermediary between the human town of Anlef and the local goblin and orcish clans was another reason. This was more due to practicality than anything, as the villages of the goblin and orcish clans were situated further away from Anlef, and it would take them at least a couple day’s travel to reach there. On the other hand, the elven village was only half a day’s travel away from the two clans’ respective villages and the elves also had the most contact with the humans to begin with.

As such, while the goblins and orcs would send in their own representatives to watch over the trade goods early on in their cooperation, later on they just entrusted them to the elves, usually only sending one or two representatives to list what items they would like to get in exchange of their trade goods. Said goblins and orcs came to the elven village in order to fetch the items they asked for, which the elves had brought back to their village along with their own things.

“Miss deVreys, these are Chieftains Azel and Faris, respectively of clans Goretusk and Iceflow,” said Iqualea as she introduced the leaders of the nearby clans to Aideen. The goblin and orcish clans had sent some of their best warriors to fetch their goods, not out of suspicion, but because the road between their villages were quite dangerous due to the wild beasts that considered it part of their territory. “Chieftains, this is Miss Aideen deVreys, a healer from the foreign lands.”

As such, any travel between the villages would either be undertaken by warriors or at least with a strong escort of warriors, with the times when the village evacuated to the human town during the large beast tide as an exception. When they evacuated they took all their valuables – mostly tools and weapons – and food with them, so the mostly empty houses they left behind would have little to attract the beast tide to it.

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What damages the village took from the tide was easy enough to repair afterwards, after all, but a dead person could not be revived.

Chieftain Azel of the Goretusk was a hybrid between goblin and orc, which gave him a more slender build similar to that of a human’s, though his well-developed muscles, prominent tusks, and sharp teeth made his ancestry clear. The goblins and orcs of the eastern region tended to have lighter skin tone, most commonly an off-green shade which allowed them to blend easier with the snowy background, and Azel was no exception.

In contrast, Chieftain Faris of the Iceflow was an imposing female orc who stood nearly a head taller than Aideen, with the typical strong build endemic to her kind. Both she and Azel were rather young, probably still in their thirties or so, so they likely rose to their position of chieftain relatively recently. Both chieftains greeted Aideen politely and quite sincerely due to how Iqualea introduced her.

Good healers were always welcomed no matter where they went to, and the two chieftains trusted Iqualea’s judgement – partly because she was old enough to be their ancestor – so if she introduced Aideen as a healer, that meant Aideen likely had enough skills to impress the middle-aged elf. That alone was something to take note of as it was usually not easy to impress a five century old elf.

Aideen had helped the people in Anlef by dealing with issues from old injuries and other lingering side effects from illnesses and the like, as well as those that came from aging, and since she was visiting the elven village, she saw no reason not to do the same for them. To her surprise, though, despite how the elves lived a far more active lifestyle and regularly hunted in the more dangerous regions of the forest, they had notably fewer old injuries and other lingering issues for her to deal with.

Part of the reason was because the regions they typically hunted in had nastier wildlife, so any of them that made a slip-up was more likely to end up dead rather than be able to return with an injury. On the other hand, the others who survived the tempering from the harsh land ended up being highly skilled to the point that they put their human counterpart to shame.

The orcs and goblins mostly did things the same way, and although they took more losses from such hunting accidents compared to the elves, they reproduced faster and had more people to spare, so it evened out in the end. There was also the fact that a skilled elven hunter would be able to help the village for centuries to come, whereas an orc or a goblin would only be able to do so for decades, so they had much greater turnover no matter what.

Naturally, since the chieftains and some of the best warriors were the ones who saw the most battles amongst their clans, they had more old injuries and other lingering scars on their bodies. Aideen did not exclude them and offered to heal the effects from those old wounds without touching the leftover scarring, as she knew that scars were seen as badges of pride in some cultures, orcish included.