LIGHTNOVELONLINE 21: The Plan of Attack
“Bila-jihns has spent far too long in the senate. On many occasions, there have been attempts for them to step down, but they had never truly left the seat.”
Sara had heard once that elven politics was often cited as the slowest thing in the entire world. With lifespans that stretched far beyond any other human’s, there was little reason to introduce new laws with any expediency, nor any real political shake up. Her only real window into their culture fled Merreign due to how slow they were to react to the rapidly expanding world. The murder charge also helped motivate him as well.
“Again, the senator has a skill in self-modification, so no one is truly quite sure what they look like naturally.” The Eternal drew two lines in chalk on the blackboard, “You will have two chances to meet and kill the target.”
“First will be at a gala being held the day after tomorrow night. I can bring you in as a retainer.”
The succubus raised her hand, “Do I need to look like an elf?” She glanced down at her ever-present breasts, “I don’t think I can pull off that level of disguise yet…”
“Great question.” He pointed at her with the piece of chalk, “If need be, I can have someone else glamour you or we can shift your role for the party.”
“I never needed to be covert when killing someone,” Sara thoughtlessly pondered, “But I figure, the higher my station, the closer I can get to the target. Maybe something higher than a retainer so it won’t be strange to be near the senator.”
Returning to his thinking pose, the masked man weighed the options, “Alright, we can take you as my romantic interest for the night. We are going to disguise you properly, however.”
“Whatever.” Sara waved away any aberrant thoughts that wormed their way into her mind.
“That may work better, as Bila is known to enjoy whisking away political opponent’s partners, so that might make you a more tantalizing bait.” Jotting down a few notes in chicken scratch, her teacher was going to be her boyfriend for the night.
Something about the taboo of even pretending to be intimate with someone in a position in power over her awoke Sara’s instincts even just a few hours after fulfilling them.
“The second attempt,” Snapping her back from her fantasy, The Eternal circled the second mark he made, “will be a bit more difficult, so you will need to take advantage of the first outing as much as possible.”
Sara raised her hand once again, “What kind of party is it?”
“That’s the thing, it’s not a party.” He jotted the chalk at her for the second time, “it’ll be a hearing I am a part of the following morning after the gala.”
“Wait…” Her brows drew closer together, “The following morning? So you expect me to woo and kill this person in less than 12 hours? And we start the day after tomorrow?!”
“Should not be an issue if you can do your ‘weird charm thing’, right?”
She felt the coy smile he projected. He managed to trick her into fulfilling both his requests at lightning speed, something she did not expect him to collect so quickly.
“Fine. Means I get to kill Merle sooner…”
“Right, and I do intend to make good on my promise once the senator’s dead.” With a quick clap, two elves, nearly identical from Sara’s perspective, emerged into the study, each holding the end of a measuring tape, “Now stand up, we need to get a dress modified to fit you.”
- - - -
Mujad sat eyeing his new study. Fascinated by the lesser devil nearby, he took copious notes over the way she sat, the way she blinked and even the way she breathed.
He asked simple questions, none of which were terribly interesting. With nothing else to do, she answered them between her thoughts.
Dressed in a simple robe, she awaited for the tailors to finish their initial draft of her gala dress. Heels, high pointed and ornate, sat at her feet, a different form of training awaited her once she decided to slip them on. Learning to walk in her curvaceous new form just a few weeks prior was quite the challenge with the new center of gravity, but now doing it with less contact area on the ground sounded like a great way to mess up her mimicked body even more.
“Question: if you feed on sperm through lower mouth hole, how do you breed?”
Sara blinked.
“I…” She was at a loss for words.
Between the young looking boy asking her such a blunt question and the idea that she was now even capable of giving birth was a shock to the system. “Ha ha, wow! That’s a lot of sand!”
She pointed out to the vast desertscape before them. Perched just a few stories down from the Sage’s study at the top of the tower, the two of them sat on a bench that provided a rest for the more mundane folks who wished to walk to the top of the marble spire.
Looking back from the vantage, the young elf looked at his research topic once more, “Does that make uncomfortable?”
Her face still beat red, Sara stood and began to make her way down stairs. Factoring in the new shoes, the downward climb and her now urgent need to remove herself from the conversation, she was far more likely to stumble down the path than walk it. “No! I just got a message from Eternal, is all!”
Nearly falling through the double doors that led inwards to the lower office at the bottom of this portion of staircase, The Eternal looked up from a book while a few of his servants were quickly moving around a mannequin torso. Barely hiding anything, the dress hung low on the heavily modified model.
A sheer white dress, the plunging neckline on the otherwise normal cocktail dress was much similar to the garment of her former wife’s she modified. Tailors walked back and forth, trying to make sure they caught her figure right and continued to widen the normally elven-shaped bust.
“I’m not wearing that!” Once she regained her footing, Sara pointed at the small cloth that would be the only thing separating her from the gazes of the Merreign nobles.
Glancing at the dress as well, the Sage shifted his focus back to his student, “And why not? It looks like what you normally wear anyways.”
Her nose was almost sore with how much she was pinching the bridge of it these days, “Because we need to get close to the target, right? I can’t do that by looking like a whore you brought in off the streets.” For better or worse, Samuel learned extensively later on in life how to impress the right people, “Besides, how would that reflect you, oh great Sage? Bringing hookers to a party?”
“You have a point…” Removing his finger from underneath his chin, he pointed to the clothiers, “A good effort, but we need something more ‘noble’. Something that can make anyone think at one glance at her thinks she is as high or of an even higher station than them!”
With a purposeful order and new sense of direction, the tailors moved with greater urgency. The pulled cloth from the baskets they kept around the mannequin, a strange art Sara never understood.
“So, what are you working on?” Sara was always curious as to what the highly lauded ‘founder of magic’ as Ashara referred to him as did with his spare time.
The masked man barely paid her any mind as he returned to his tome. Unable to read elven, even the title remained elusive to her. “I guess I’ll go look around town. Shoot me a spell when you want to find me…”
Without so much as a wave, the succubus left the room. With a quick stop to apply the illusion spell, she adorned the same look she had in Thistlebrook before descending the stairs into the city.
- - - -
Despite being in the middle of the day, the blazing sun beating down on the collection of marble buildings below, a great number of elves walked through Abraj Al Bait. Sara was grateful she still wore the high heels, despite the deadly descension down the stairs, as it kept her recovering feet from the blistering stone below.
Even though she was never exposed to many elves during her lifetimes, there seemed to be little difference from one to another outside of easily deterministic factors such as hair length and color, slight variances in height and ear size and dress. Easily the strangest thing she found was that each elf was incredibly androgynous. Even the ones up in the tower, she assumed to be female with their light features, but now that she was on the ground floor, it appeared the males were nowhere near as masculine as she was used to.
“Now, what to do in a town like this…” She stood out like a sore thumb. Standing a head over the largely homogenous crowd, her other features drew the looks of nearly everyone around the tower.
Self-conscious over her body, she tried her best to avoid their gazes. Half of her wanted to bark at them, hoping they’d get the idea despite the language barrier, the other half wished to just slink away.
With a chin up, she continued to meander around the city.
Many stalls lined the streets, shouts incoherently echoed over the crowds of elves walking to and fro. Various fruits like cucumbers and cactus meat shone vividly, their verdant greens appearing unnatural, as if in defiance to one of the largest deserts in the world. Weapons, exotic in their appearance, mostly consisted of thin blades, showcasing the elves’ mastery over earth mana. Dancers wore little to cover up as they danced in front of the crowds, a reason for potential customers to stop and view the wares lined before them.
Of course, as she passed, people gawked and vendors shouted incoherently. Such an extreme figure appeared to be completely unimaginable to the mostly flat and slim elves. Some walked up to her in an attempt to start a conversation, few even tried to grasp her breasts and buttocks amidst the confusion.
Just as she got fed up with the circus forming around her, a loud whistle sounded off nearby.
The crowd formed a circle around her as two well-dressed individual elves tightly walked up, their thin swords drawn. Upon reaching her, each took a turn of examination, scrutinizing the strange out-of-place non-elf woman.
“Dhraifir? Mulak ak shibaun?” The elf spoke in an authoritative tone, he appeared to be a guard judging by his prestigious outfit and stature.
Sara shook her head, her white hair gaining much volume with the lack of moisture in the air, “Sorry. I don’t understand you.”
The two elves looked at eachother. Thankfully, the second took their turn and walked up to her, “Sorry, we should guessed.”
Holding out a gloved hand, the elf was shorter than her, but the tall stovepipe hat they wore gained a few inches over her. Their uniform was ornate, five buttons in parallel running up the body, golden against the black main suit. Looking closer to orchestral members, the second elf’s skin was much lighter than their contemporaries, but their ears were far larger, “We were curious there was crowd forming. Appears you are not from here?”
The accent was choppy, but serviceable, “Y-yeah. I came here with The Eternal.” She paused to see if the name warranted a reaction, but appeared not to, “I wanted to get out for a second to see the town and-”
“I see…” The guard held out a hand, cutting her off, “Do you have documentation?”
Sara froze.
Magic brought her across the world but it did not provide her with any formal registration. She wondered if The Eternal had a plan for that. “I- I do!” She lied, hoping her succubus wiles would kick in, “Just take me back to the big tower back there and I can get it!”
Looking once more between each other, the guards shrugged, “You coming with us. Foreigners strictly prohibited unless legal.”
As one guard explained this to her, the other pulled her arm behind her back and cuffed her to themself. Capturing more than half the forearms of the detained, they were presumably there to restrict arm movements of casters to prevent somatic components from being utilized.
“Whoa whoa!” Sara shouted, trying to break free of the cuff, “I’m not trying to break in the country!”
“Well, why are you here, then?”
Sara looked around as the crowd stared back at the scene she was causing. Each elf looked in fear of the foreigner that somehow got to the center of the city within the middle of the most brutal desert in the world. She was a stranger in a foreign land in which no one understood her.
“I came to help The Eternal! Don’t you know of him?” The woman continued to resist, trying to break free of the cuff, “He’s a Sage! He lives in the big tower over there! He wears a mask!”
Shaking their heads, the elf guards led her farther and farther away from the central tower.
World notes: Elven Politics
While less litigious than dwarves or even tallmen, elven politics is renown across the world for being dry and uninteresting, even to those who devote their lives to it. Since an elf's lifespan far outpaces any other's, topics, motions, and even debates over specific verbiage can take a decade of time. Foreigners often consider trial litigation and even detainment to be a death sentence due to the length of the process that regularly reaches over 50 years.
Due to a small population and long lifespan, very few criminals reside in the prison system. Publicly, there are only three outlaws serving a life sentence: Sourhand Samir, a former owner of a pickling facility, he performed a string of murders, disposing the bodies into vats of brine. Myra the Maven was a teacher who performed charm magics over her students to commit felony thefts while she taught classes, always having an alibi. She was caught when a former lover of hers came forth with allegations. And lastly, a man simply known as Medburak. A wizard known the world over, his talents over the magical arts are second to none. Many claimed he had died serving his sentence, but no formal statement had been released over the subject.
Few immigrants of other races can even live in Merreign, due to the lack of potable water. Since elves can go so long without anything to drink, only the richest of other humans can co-exist in elven cities.
Operating as an representative republic, elven senators usually serve for life. Five senators are selected from each of the four main cities and three from the more remote villages bringing a grand total of 23 elected officials. The Salon, as it's called, meets regularly, often carrying forth laws and motions they debate over decades. It has been adopted into the nomenclature around the world for someone who is deemed to be useless at their job, e.g: "That fellow over there who cannot bait a hook is about as useless as an elven senator."