[Bishop-chan's notes - No Elves were harmed in this scenario. Physically anyway... I told them, but they just wouldn't listen...]
Akhmet's Investigations - Part 1
by Blinded
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Akhmet, the fake Sylph Faery, in reality an agent of the investigation committee in charge of studying the Faeries of ALfheim growled impatiently to himself.
Originally he had arrived at Arrun accompanied by two of his fellow elven investigators, Ehsam and Verda and a group of human hirelings to observe the Faeries in their Capital. It was a promising assignment. Faeries true to their nature as a newborn race were woefully open and honest about themselves and their nature.
It ached him to see just how helpful and friendly these elf-lookalikes were to him and his companions even when they were all disguised as human spice merchants, a painful reminder of his own people's naivete during the time of their alliance with the Demon Brimir. He couldn't do a thing about it even if he wanted to, not without exposing himself or endangering security of his own people anyway...
The scouting phase was ridiculously easy, especially when Akhmet and his elven fellows dropped their human guises and started posing as the outrageously elf-like Sylph Faeries, some of whom looking just like fair and particularly well-endued Elven Maidens. Two days, it took two mere days to map the city and mark its important and/or strategic landmarks, and get a good feel of mood of the Faeries.
In these two days He, as the leader of the trio of investigators had decided that Faeries for all apparent their connection with Spirits, for how else they could use their strange magics, be they called skills, like the illusion-breaking search, or proper spells, were a bit too fascinated and mingled with affairs of the local humans and entirely too young to easily accept the greater wisdom of the Elves and be saved from their own foolishness.
All was left was to take some samples of their flora and fauna and craftsmanship, especially what they could not trade for, and return home as he should have... but alas! even a venerable and wise elf such as himself, only kept out of circle of the Elites of his people by family connections and backdoor policies despite his obviously superior intellect and skills, could be swayed by passion of youth and spirit of adventure.
The foolish younglings, Ehsam and Verda had convinced him that they should bring back with them the most precious gift of all, the one thing short of bringing a live Faery: An example of Faery lore and knowledge.
Fortunately for all their foolishness and naivete the Faeries were cultured enough to have a rather impressive library in their capital. Akhmet pretty much doubted it was even close to his own personal library in term of quality but then same could be said for most of personal libraries and some of the public ones among his people.
On their third day of staying, after having an admittedly good Faery-style breakfast on insistence of Verda, who had taken an alarming liking of Faeries in the last two days, some of their more educated hirelings were sent to collect the books. It disgusted him that a race so similar in look to his own could bring themselves to allow the demi-animal humans into their repositories of knowledge but since this made his work easier he decided not to mind it much.
Needless to say the incompetent humans failed. After roughly three hours of discreetly waiting outside of Arrun Central Library, the only thing he earned for his trouble was sight of maiden Verda as she clutched her cousin's shoulder and doubled over in laughed at the sight before her: their trio of hirelings, curled into balls like overgrown bugs and suckling at their own thumbs while occasionally whimpering to themselves as a group of faeries in blue of the City Watch carted out of the Library. gate.
Disgraceful! He didn't expect much of competence from humans to achieve even this much but this was no excuse for an elven maiden to act so... lewdly in front of an Elder!
They tried again two days later and to ensure that no human oafishness would ruin the task this time he had decided to send in Ehsam along with a couple of hirelings who claimed to be skilled thieves, refusing Verda's offer to go in and ask to borrow some of their books... To even suggest such an stupid, outrageous and impractical thing was not only unexpected but also suggested the troublesome prospect of the naive fool Verda had actually started considering these Faeries as people! What was next? Spouting that blasphemous rubbish about the Holy Saint being spouse to the Accursed Demon and spawning the demon-born half-human abominations?
A commutation broke Akhemt out of his grumbling haze. The Elder elf's eyes narrowed as his lips started moving in a silent chant. Unlike the crude humans' foul magic or clumsy spellworks of Faeries Akhmet's superior and profound elven magic had no need for foci or dancing lights and he doubted even the maiden Verda could notice his speed-casting spell that was building up at his fingertips. Obviously not even the elven competence of Ehsam was enough to keep human-foolishness at bay and their no doubt successful expedition was no chased down by librarians and the City Watch...
Except it wasn't the case.
The group that came out of the Library were not running away, chasing or even escorting anyone... they were carting... AAARGH! Incompetence of the youth these days! There before his eyes were the unsurprisingly balled, thumb suckling and whimpering pair of humans hirelings and-
"Ehsam!" Verda cried to his left as she darted toward her pale and whimpering cousin.
Sighing in exasperation Akhmet dismissed his spell and followed the impulsive maiden.
"Wha.. what happened to Ehsam?"
"You know this Sylph, ma'am?" asked a severe-looking Spriggan in blue of City Watch.
"Ye..yes. He is my cousin Ehsam" Akhmet could barely hold himself from spitting a string of curses at Verda's careless declaration. Why the young these days had to be so impulsive and cause trouble for their Elders? "What happened to him?"
"We honestly don't know ma'am" said the Spriggan with a shake of his head " Your cousin seems to be affected by whatever strange thing that had affected these humans. But don't worry, Seras-san here" he pointed at the blue haired faery woman standing over the whimpering trio and chanting some spells "was IRL medic and a trained healer. She says they are just traumatized."
"Traumatized?"
"Yeah, whatever happened to them must have scared them big time. It's not the first time something like that happens and as far as we know other than developing a healthy respect for laws and books the victims will be fine after a good night's rest." the Spriggan raised an eyebrow "Do you know why is that miss?"
Akhmet took a deep breath and stepped away from his young companions. Whatever would befall them was definitely their own fault now and he honestly didn't care either. But the distraction they provided was sure to serve him well here. It was true after all, if you want something done, do it yourself.
"Oooh... mm... well, he made a bet that he could pick a book from library without permissio-" the rest of Verda's explanation was left unheard as Akhmet walked into the Library.
Apparently, and much to Faeries' credit, the Books were protected by an enchantment of sorts and scared the weak-willed. Unfortunately for the Faeries Akhmet was neither a gutless fool nor so ill-educated as to not be able to break such protections with his own considerable magical might, great intellect and vast wisdom.
The library was large... massive even, and probably, just probably, was even larger than the Senate's Library, though he doubted what it had in quantity could overcome Arrun's Central Library's lackings in quality compared with ANY elven library... and why all the signs were in that accursed faery gibberish? It wasn't his fault that unlike the two younglings he had no time to learn faery writing, really! And the "Romalian" signage made even less sense. what did... Electronics mean anyway?!
"Are you lost?" Akhmet, the Chief Investigator of Arrun Expedition and supremely skilled but underappreciated Elven Mage almost jumped out of his skin.
Spinning around, hands held in a classic elven casting stance he faced the speaker: A young bespectacled faery girl in ridiculous garb of Faery librarians.
'Just my fortune!' Akhmet thought with glee as he took a deep breathe to calm his racing heart.
" You, girl!" the elf declared imperiously, his voice not-at-all squeaky "Escort me to your arcane repository and I might spare your pathetic life!"
The faery girl gave him a flat stare.
"Don't misunderstand girl!" Akhmet growled boldly "I'm an Elf! not no sniveling sylph or faery! Obey me and I'll spare you my Fearsome Elven Might!" The line was something of a classic among those who dealt with humans, and usually enough to make the barbarians to just give up and run away screaming, or drop on their asses as fear robbed their legs of strength. It wasn't like he was bolstering his courage by hearing his own voice or anything! It was just to make the girl scared into submission without resorting to drastic measures!
The girl raised an skeptical eyebrow at the loud declaration and shook her head as if in resignation.
It was nothing... It was foolish, stupid and entirely too irrational to feel that way but even as he chanted his binding spell and pointed his outstretched hand at the surprisingly unimpressed faery girl, a sense of dread crawled up from based of his spine... She was just one defenseless little girl, right?
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While being young, healthy and beautiful again were all well and good, as far as Maeda Suzume, the formerly eighty seven years old retired bank accountant from Nagoya, Japan was concerned, the greatest thing that happened to she and her equally old and now similarly a young faery, husband was the sight before her: Faeries of all factions who ate, drank, smiled and laughed as they sat in Maeda couple's Inn, as if there was nothing wrong in their lives.
Suzume could still remember the heavy atmosphere of confusion, despair and desperation that had dominated Arrun in the earlier days. People who neither had anything to do nor had the will to do anything, either huddling in the dark corners of this now all too real city and wallowing over what they had lost, wandering around with bewildered expressions and demanding explanation from Admins who were not there and equally lost players, or worst of all, having that empty look of the walking dead who had gave up on living in their eyes.
Neither Suzume nor her husband Kenta could bear it. It was entirely too similar to the very same look the elderly couple had when they looked at each other on their day of mutual retirement: No hobby, no purpose, no life. It was then that She had realized " if you enjoy what you do, you'll never 'work' a day in your life" was just a load of crap! Not that she exactly enjoyed her job as an accountant, but it was almost all she knew about her life, and apparently same went for her husband too.
That could have been their end. Two sixty years old geezers who despite being married for over forty years barely knew each other, with little to no life (social, personal or otherwise) outside of the jobs they had left behind stared at each other with purposeless, vacant eyes of the walking dead.
But they refused to just roll over and die. Bygones were bygones and even if somethings, like opportunity to have a child of their own, were forever beyond them, they refused to accept that this was their end. After forty years they started to spend meaningful time with each other and looked for hobbies to fill their empty lives: Walks under moonlight, seeing historical landmarks, learning how to cook, hiking, even playing video games, MMOs and finally VRMMOs.
Their (un)fortunate failure in being one of the ten thousand player, and honestly they didn't mind being trapped with each other in a Death Game at ripe old age of eighty six and seven, had led them to other games and ALfheim Online and its power of Flight was just too great a temptation to refuse.
And so Tensa-K the Swordsman of Imps and Suzumebatchi the sorceress of Sylphs were born into faery land of ALfheim. It wasn't like regaining their lost youth... not that she remembered much of it, but the joy of flight, strength of Faeries and above all, ability to taste all sorts of old and new things without resorting to new innovations like Taste Pills, worth it.
The real rebirth came after the event known as Transition, and frankly both Tensa and Suzumebatchi were entirely too pleased with themselves for being lazy that day and deciding to instead of taking their nightly walk, come to Arrun and see the rumored Sylph-Cait attempt at beating the game for themselves.
It was true that in all honesty the formerly old couple no longer cared for the life they had left behind and could not really sympathize with majority of the newly minted Faeries, who did have a life in IRL that they looked forward to, but their previous experience with lack of purpose in life made them want to save their fellow former Japanese and new Faery kin from the insidious enemy they never saw coming.
At least in words the solution was simple: Make them enjoy their lives and give them something to do, and for that they had to find something to do for themselves first.
Thus Bat-Bee Inn came to be. The establishment, like the rest of Inns and Dining Halls was originally manned by NPCs, but after the Transition it fell to former players who were willing and able to fill their role and provide food and clean, warm beds for the other Faeries. Other than Suzumebatchi herself who did most of the cooking and managing, there were two waitresses, Fu and Yugito, Sylph and Cait Syth respectively and a trio of Puca musicians who went by the name Ninth Heaven who worked in the Inn.
Tensa, her husband, feeling more adventurous than ever, had joined the Mob Patrols and in addition to advertising for the Inn had managed to talk some of the less adventurous faeries into supplying them with fresh material, namely fish, meat and dairy products which were among the first of Arrun's original food supply to be eaten.
And of course there was Dunkirk and news of daring rescue of three hundred stranded former SAO players in the floating island of Albion. Faery Lords while not exactly real lords and probably lacking any real life leadership experience had done a great job thus far, and not only had secured safety of those who relied on them in this strange new world that was Halkegenia but also managed to almost completely defeat the hidden enemy that was lack of purpose and depression.
But as was the way of life nothing was perfect, and in this particular case what marred this perfect picture of liveliness was one gloomy Sylph girl sitting alone with her cup of tea in the furthest corner of the Inn.
Suzimebatchi wrinkled her nose in distaste... the girl Verda was alone only because her cousin and uncle had decided to be that guy by attempting to break one of Arrun's unwritten laws and break the sanctity of Arrun Central Library, leaving the poor girl to deal with fallout of their idiocy. Fortunately for the trio of Sylphs the City Watch had decided long ago that whatever Spirit of Justice that put fear of law and order in hearts of those who broke laws of Library was more than enough a punishment. Unfortunately this still left the young Sylph stranded in the sea of unfamiliar faces.
Ah well... Suzumebachi couldn't really allow this to continue, could she?
"Fu-chan!" Suzume called to the green haired Sylph waitress "Could you take over for a moment please?"
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All things considered Akhmet was probably the luckiest bastard in entire Arrun city and he didn't even know it. He was lucky because the City Watch faeries not only had not given her grief over foolishness of her baby cousin and helped her with carrying the unconscious whimpering wreck that was Ehsam to their room in Bat Bee Inn, but also had explained that he would recover from whatever happened to him after only a good night's rest. Any other thing and she would have done much much more than laughing hysterically when two hours later a pair of faeries in blue of the Arrun's City Watch knocked at her door and delivered the whimpering elder.
Galls of the man! To leave her to deal with fallout of his idiotic plan and use his chance to sneak into the Library. In fact Verda was pretty sure she could have forgiven him even then! had he not ended up like the rest...
As it was she settled with putting the old mage under the most potent sleeping charm she could cast, if only to make sure he wouldn't worsen their already disastrous situation with a panic attack after waking up, the massive hangover that was the common side effect of this particular spell was just a happy coincident.
Honestly, what was that idiot thinking?!
"He probably didn't."
Startled, Verda looked up from her steaming cup of faery tea and was greeted by smiling face of their Sylph hostess "Miss Suzumebachi?"
This Faery woman was the other reason for Akhmet's continued survival. Young, perhaps even younger than Verda herself if the Faeries aged like Elves did, cheerful and very friendly, Suzumebatchi with her pale skin, vibrant green eyes and golden hair looked almost exactly like an Elf maiden herself. It was probably why Akhmet had decided to pick her establishment as their Sylph persona's place and temporary headquarter. Verda honestly didn't know what she would have done with the two unconscious elves on her hand if they didn't have this room.
"Suzume's fine Verda-chan." the Sylph said with a smile "Mind if I join you?"
Did she mind? It Akhment was around he would have sniffed and said something to chase the Faery away, the whole "Keep your distance from the locals!" and that not. But then it hadn't stopped her from sneaking out at nights in the last two days, so why would it now? "Not at all, Mis... ah Suzume-san."
This way of calling people, adding suffixes to their names was one of the fruits of those nightly activities. Apparently it was considered rude or offensive to just say the names, and as she had observed "-san" was something you could add to any name without appearing to be rude... the others, "-chan", "-kun", "-tan" and as such were a bit too complicated to figure out in just two days.
"You shouldn't worry yourself about those boys Verda-chan," The Sylph said as she poured herself some tea "The boys will always stay boys no matter how old they get. I've been living with my Tensa-kun for the last sixty year and he still manages to make me want to facepalm every now and then."
"Si.. sixty years?" Verda spluttered. The girl before her didn't look THAT old, let alone being married for that long and that was by elven standard.
"Yup" Suzume continued cheerfully, oblivious to the Elf's obvious expression of shocked disbelief "What? You young people think we old timers wouldn't like playing games?"
Ah yes, she'd completely forgotten about the faeries' original homeland, IRL, where they actually looked more like humans and that their Faery bodies were just some sort of temporary bodies they wore for entertainment.. Or they did, before something went wrong with their grand spell and made them real flesh and blood faeries. She pretty much doubted they were actually humans. Perhaps they were some mighty race of Firstborn who just looked the crude, short-living barbarians that were identified as humans. Something not unlike how some of the Faeries looked like Elves now.
For one thing almost every single Faery could read and write in their Kanji, and those who didn't, which Verda herself had been mistaken for as one after a particularly silly slip up, were foreigners from other parts of IRL who used their Gift of Tongues to speak read and write in other languages. Or they did, apparently after the Transition the Gift of Tongue no longer applied to written materials anymore.
For another they were generally as cultured and well-behaved as her people, and even though their beautiful city Arrun was an equal to any Elven city, she'd heard some of the Faeries grumbling about it being a backwater place compared to their IRL.
And of course they didn't like people prying about their lives in IRL... sometimes even if they were the ones who brought it up.
"Oh... I, I didn't mean to pry..."
"Don't worry about it, Verda-chan." Suzume dismissed her apology with a wave of her hand "So tell me, how are you doing?"
"I'm fine, thank you for your concern."
"Of course you are" The Innkeeper rolled her eyes "It was another girl with stormy clouds over hear head who just looked like you. So again, how are you doing?"
"Very badly," Yerda sighed " I told them. Goodness knows I told them! And they still went and done it!"
"Library raiders, huh? Don't be too hard on yourself or them. They are not the first and I pretty much doubt the last ones the Library's Guardian Spirit-sama wouldl punish like that."
"Spirit?" Verda blurted before she could stop herself.
"Uhm" Suzume nodded "Verda-chan is from out of town, right?"
"Yes."
"Well... it's more of an urban legend in Arrun, really, but ever since the Transition every time someone tries to steal from Arrun Central Library, he or she would end up as a whimpering wreck curled up in a ball. Nobody knows exactly what happened to them but since it's never fatal and they recover from it with just a mildly scarring traumatic experience, most people just decided to accept it as divine punishment rendered by Divine Guardian-Spirit of the Library or Spirit of the World Tree. I suppose that's why the City Watch leave the first-time offenders alone too."
Spirits protected the Library? Well, Faeries Gift of Tongues was rather similar with Spirits' ability to talk with any and call creatures who could speak and some who didn't, so it wasn't all that odd that Faeries, a supposed race of Firstborn who lived close to a massive magical tree also benefited from Spirits' blessing. No wonder Akhmet, an insufferable douchebag but nevertheless a very competent Elven mage, was defeated like that. Not even their firstborn magic could challenge an Spirit in its own domain. But wait... "First time offenders?"
"Unbelievable, no?" the Sylph chuckled into her cup " Apparently some peoples' skull are too thick, and somehow they'd decided stealing Library's stuff is some sort of epic Rogue-build quest with big reward. The result's always the same but the City Watch boys decided to take them second-timers in to drive the point in. I doubt it works though."
"But what if they don't repeat it?" Verda asked, trying not to sound too interested.
"Nothing. The Spirit-sama's pretty forgiving if they don't repeat themselves. The Librarians however, especially our cute head-librarian, Bishop-chan, are very protective of the Library, so they might give your cousin and uncle a bit of stink-eye next time they go there."
As the Sylph and the fake Sylph returned to their cups an idea started to form before Verda's eyes. She was in a very unique position of being the only member of the Investigation Team that had not manage to offend the Guardian Spirit of Library, and the only one of the trio who knew the Spirit was fairly forgiving... maybe, just maybe she could use this tidbit of knowledge to her advantage here... After all was it not their close relation with Spirits and Nature that truly set the Elves apart from barbarous humans? Someone had to stay behind and do a damage control with the Spirit situation...
But first, let's put some of her local knowledge to good use "Umm... Suzume-san, do you suppose Ninth Heaven can play... rock-n-roll?" yes, that was the name of that horrendous ear-sore of a music.
Suzume blinked "I'm not sure, why?"
"Oh, it's nothing. Uncle Akhmet just loves it, so I thought it might cheer him up a bit when he wakes up."