In Loki's Honor

After the coronation ceremony, which was as much of a blast as it was a cringeworthy shameful memory, like that frat party where you drank too much and ran naked across the campus - I never did that, ever - we put ourselves to work.

Without a council, we didn't need to worry about those idiots doing shit to screw with us but it also meant we had to do their job. Well, Sariandi had. Ahem. Excuse my faux pas. Well, Princess Sariandi had. I was totally incompetent to rule a nation. I had this crown because of a fluke of destiny.

No. Not a fluke of destiny, but by Divine Design. Double capital D's because these guys were big Douche Dicks. They put me in the unborn princess' body to screw up with the ritual. I was 200% sure of that. So certain that if they told me they didn't I would cry bullshit back.

It is like traveling to a distant continent at random and finding that guy that sifts through your trash there. It is no coincidence, he's a stalker.

Oh, well. What was done was done. I wasn't a person to linger in the past even though I latched to it with gusto. Like sitting on the throne in Lily's shape and scaring the shit off of Sariandi. Princess Sariandi. It would click someday.

It was a few days after the ceremony and she caught me red-handed. My clothes were all loose because I went from a hundred-eighty centimeters tall supermodel to a six-year-old girl.

"You should stop goofing off. This is no way to rule a nation!" She shouted at me.

I shifted back to my normal form, fixed my clothes, and shrugged, "It could be worse. I could be lying in a pond distributing swords."

"Why would you do that? And what does that has to do with doing your damn job!" She hissed then added, "Your Majesty."

"Exactly. Doing that would be no basis for government. But I'm 'mother'. Call me mother."

"In your dreams, maybe. Are you ready to hold court? The exiles are waiting outside."

I approached her. "Sariandi, if you are not satisfied with my job, there's an easy solution. I can abdicate the throne and you be the Queen. Here, take Aiur with you."

She jumped back. "You don't dare!"

You see. Overworked people can always be pacified with the threat of promotion.

I adjusted Aiur on my head, "No. I won't abdicate today. Let's hold court. Do we perchance have nobility? Dukes, Counts, Barons?"

She twisted her nose at the idea, "What are we? Humans?"

I giggled, "Sometimes, yes."

She sighed. "Yes, sometimes you are a human even if you don't wear the skin of one. Alloralla, I need to tell you one thing before we start the court session."

"What is it, daughter?"

She summoned some courage, and said with a sigh, "Thanks."

I giggled and jumped to hug her. "What did I do this time?" She melted into my hug. I started to knead her back muscles.

"The perk you gave me. At first, I thought you were bad because I thought it was just for... that. But now, I don't know how to live without it anymore. Did you know it affects even my sleep? I wake up every morning feeling as if I'd spent a whole day in bed." She paused to catch her breath and added, "Not to mention the food. And tea."

"And my massages," I said, working on her muscles.

She leaned her head on my shoulder, "I hate you."

We were best frenemies. But I let go of her because I had to sit on the throne and look dignified as I held court.

The exiles entered and lamented their woes. Their reasons for exile were several. A failure in some important task here, the loss of loved ones there. A very few went there because they were found guilty of petty crimes. For the first two kinds, I encouraged them to return and become productive members of our society. I started to impart to them that perfection was a worthy goal, but perfectionism wasn't a good measure for one's failures and successes.

The latter received a nonlethal {Royal Geas} to not commit the same crimes again and sent on their way. It cost me nothing to maintain it unless they broke it.

There were other cases as well. Several elves wanted to offer me their art. A poem, a song, a painting, or a sculpture. Morale in Fulgen was at an all-high.

A week after my coronation, Nenandil came back. I felt her inside me, sleeping. Recovering from being brutalized by the council. When I sensed her stirring awake, I withdrew to my room and shifted into Silvertreak because I knew she loved that form.

I cheered her as she came into her senses.

She manifested and squealed, "Silverstreak! My favorite silkie!"

I hugged that fairy and planted a kiss on her cheek.

I squealed as she took flight and lifted me. We spun in the air. "It is so good to have you back! Can you die again in like... never?"

"Yes, sister," She replied.

"Sister?"

"Of course. You're my mother's goddaughter. We're sisters now."

From that day on, I only slept in silkie form, hugging Nenandil.

The council was held at the palace infirmary. Every time one of them woke up, I was forced to pay around 1,500 SP to put them back to sleep. I wanted to deal with them sooner but I had another way more important job to do.

I was at the general infirmary on the fourth tree. I sent a summons for every elf with some kind of permanent injury that couldn't be healed by either the clerics, druids, or magicians to present themselves so I could operate them and restore their bodies.

I learned that restorative magic has a window of time to be used. After that, the injury can't be restored. But my [Soul Surgeon] Skills were not restorative magic. I was rebuilding the bodies like legos, cell per cell. Since they were likely born from the System reading my mind when it created the Profession a couple lives ago, it made sense to not have that kind of limitation. Only in two cases had the elf suffered an injury to their souls as well and I couldn't do anything. It happened at the same fight, against a nasty unique undead.

There was a drawback to my soul-guided surgery. It took as much time or more than a similar surgery back on Earth. I spent months working on the elves' injuries. Eventually, I found one elf that had the Soul Attribute unlocked and he was interested in learning the ultra-rare Profession. Finally, a year after I'd been crowned Queen of Fulgen, I had time to take care of the council members.

Recruiting Sariandi burned forty percent of my SP pool. It meant I could bring back to life only people with less than three hundred thousand HP. My plan originally was to assassinate the council, interrogate their ghosts, as the odds of a ghost lying to me were close to zero, then put them back in their bodies. Like catch and release fishing but with people.

To do that, I had to heal each one of them from zero to full HP and tally the notifications to calculate their HP pool. Which meant I had to give them a poison that halted natural HP recovery. It took a day for each one of them. Of the eleven four had too much HP. If I killed them, they would be gone for good.

That changed my plans a bit. I would have to ask the seven others about the four I couldn't kill, then interrogate the four alive. Probably I could interrogate them without killing using a combination of geas and {Royal Order} but let's be honest.

I wanted to kill them. Since four lives ago.

When the time came to execute them, however, I stopped. I did some math and found out they were not worth killing. I always calculated Exp using the Favored Enemy bonus and I didn't have one for elves. And no, neither [True Hero] nor [Questor] had elves in their list of favored enemies.

So, no Exp, no assassination. The [Assassin] ethos of this world was like this. If nobody dangled that 657% or at least the 406% bonus tag on the target, the killers in black wouldn't move. Unless the monetary prize was huge. Neither would I. The council saved their asses on the technicality of being too insignificant to be assassinated coupled with being too bothersome to revive.

I set my interviews from the least important to the most. This way I could come to interrogate the chairman armed with information. I had a sworn scribe taking notes. The councilors were drugged to block their spellcasting.

"Starting an interview with councilor number eleven, Folred Holacary. Administering wake up tonic," I said so the scribe could start the report. "Using {Song of Health}."

I sang the magical hymn that would restore his HP. Folred quickly came to his senses.

"Hello, Folred. I am {Queen} Alloralla and I have some questions for you."

He struggled. I applied several {Royal Orders} until it got through his thick elven skull that I was calling the shots.

I knew from some of the exiles that the council was pushing people that disagreed with their policies out of Fulgen. But several of them were not even in the exile village. Others, like my friend Renyn the [Poet], decided to travel the world for a while until things got better. I had to send messages to other places to let the elves know there was a Queen on the throne once again.

But elven corruption worked differently from human corruption. The council wasn't doing that for the money, they were doing it for the power. They wanted to dominate Fulgen. What would happen later was anyone's guess?

It was when I interrogated the fourth from the top that the dire secret of my birth mother's death came out.

The Demon Lord cultists that kidnapped her had inside help from the council. They wanted to remove the Royal family and become the de facto rulers of the Forest. But it backfired because nobody without the {Elven Royalty} Perk could renew the covenant with the elder fairies. That's why they begrudgingly set out to search for me - with a hint from Yznera that they could find one "Lost Princess" in the underground tunnels - and did that ritual to de-undeadify me.

My next question for all of them was if Sariandi knew that. To my relief, she didn't. They were plotting to push her out of the council for a long time, that's why when she decided to quit they just forced her into exile.

Armed with that knowledge, there was no lack of Exp multiplier that could save them. Lily's trauma for losing her Rosalinda, Apricot's struggles to reunite her family. They all came back and guided my hand as I clawed their throats open. All of them together were worth a level.

I looked at the notifications with disgust. I had a perk and bought "Favored Enemy [Trolls]". Now I had no hopes of recomposing the administrative advisor body so soon. New people would have to be trained from scratch.

Four years. That's how long it took for Sariandi and me to put things in order. Loyal elves were recruited and trained to occupy the council seats. They would serve for only twenty years before a whole new council would take over. After forty years they could apply to come back. That would ensure that we would have at least three full sets of councilors available and that nobody got too comfortable on their seats. I also managed to train two [Soul Surgeons] that would work to heal our elves with wounds magic couldn't.

Every year I went to visit Nenandil's mom and pay my tithe of ten thousand MP.

The really good news was, we finally had some princelings in the oven! Sariandi finally found a nice elf consort to partner with and fulfilled her Royal duties! Hooray! Elven pregnancy lasted a whole year, sixteen Earth months, or four hundred and eighty days. But did I say some princelings? Yes, because Nenandil could sense three heartbeats in Sariandi's body.

I was going to become a fairy godgrandma!

The Forest was wrapped in a happy mood.

With a proper council in place, one that would have fewer incentives to succumb to corruption and babies incoming, I decided it was time to take the next step in my Realm building.

It was time to hunt us some griffin eggs.