Chapter 688: Book Signing Goes Wrong [Bonus Chapter]
They had a mission!
They had an official high-priority requisition scroll from Lady Aki... They were supposed to be visiting the heavy metallurgical foundries in the Fourth Ring.
They were supposed to be negotiating bulk contracts for reinforced mythril rebar, high-grade granite blocks, and automated wall turrets.
"Ah..."
They were supposed to be taking scenic, dignified landscape photographs for Lady Eluned’s album.
Instead... they were standing in a line that stretched four city blocks.
Beside her, Aeliana was practically vibrating with unbridled girlish excitement.
The Elf princess was lightly bouncing on the balls of her feet with her hands clasped tightly against her chest and her silver-green eyes sparkling with an intensity that Morwenna had never seen on a battlefield.
Morwenna slowly turned her head, glaring daggers at the elf.
"Aeliana," Morwenna ground out through clenched teeth, her raspy voice vibrating with suppressed fury. "Why the fuck are we standing in this line again?"
Aeliana gasped, turning to her with wide scandalized eyes, her pointed ears twitching in righteous indignation.
"Morwenna, please! Do not raise your voice in the queue! It is deeply disrespectful to the literary arts!"
She leaned in close, whispering with reverence while bouncing on her toes.
"This is the line for the Grand Book-Signing Pavilion! According to every single cultural broadsheet in the Upper Tier, this is the number-one highest-selling romance-and-passion novel in the entire Sovereign Realm! The author has sold over forty million copies across several sectors and today, for one hour only, the legendary author is personally signing copies for the public."
Morwenna stared at her.
"...It’s a book."
"It is not merely a book!" Aeliana corrected passionately.
With a flourish of her wide pale green sleeves, Aeliana reached into her spatial pouch and pulled out a thick well-worn dog-eared paperback volume bound in dark crimson leather with embossed gold foil lettering.
Morwenna glanced at the cover.
Depicted in vivid borderline-pornographic full-color illustration was a towering muscular dragon-shifter with torn leather breeches pinning a slender, flushed elf maiden against an ancient stone pillar, the text above them screaming.
[Bound by the Dragon Lord’s Heat!]
"I discovered this sacred text in the forgotten eastern annex of the library back in Blessed Land," Aeliana whispered, her pale cheeks flushing a radiant sinful shade of pink as she cradled the book against her bosom like a holy relic. "I read it three times under the covers while Lord Sy was away. Morwenna... this author opened my eyes. Truly, completely opened my eyes to the boundless glorious realm of pure smut! The emotional depth! The pacing of the passionate thrusting! The raw primal degradation of the inner core! It is immaculate!"
Aeliana smoothed the creased cover with trembling adoring fingers, looking up at the front of the pavilion where a mysterious, cloaked figure wearing an ornate porcelain fox mask was rapidly autographing copies behind a velvet-roped desk.
"I need ours to be signed," Aeliana declared, her chin lifting with absolute, unyielding conviction. "I will present this signed masterpiece to Lord Sy tonight, and we shall reenact Chapter Fourteen together!"
Morwenna stood frozen on the marble pavement.
She looked at the book and she looked at the flushed Elf princess beside her then, she looked up toward the lavender sky of Central City, letting out a long soul-weary breath through her nose.
’Pervert,’ Morwenna thought, shaking her head in deep irreparable despair. ’A hopeless degenerate pervert... We are never getting that iron...’
Morwenna’s jaw tightened until the tendons along her throat stood out like taut rigging.
She stood planted squarely on the polished flagstones, Tidebringer’s scabbard tapping against her thigh with an agitated clacking sound.
"Aeliana," Morwenna growled, pitching her raspy voice low enough that only the elf’s twitching pointed ears would catch the venom behind it. "Pull your head out of the gutter for five goddamn seconds... We have an actual commission from our Lord to sort out. In case that brain of yours forgot, we are supposed to have these building supplies and forge materials cleared before our Lord slips back and goes to meet with this... this Valerius person."
The name tasted like cheap grog on Morwenna’s tongue.
’Valerius...’ she thought, her stormy gray eyes narrowing as she glared at the sea of tourists, merchants, and robed magi clogging the avenue. ’A young noble? A pristine golden-haired heir from the human world? Hah... I’ve sailed the shattered straits for more than five centuries, and if the sea taught me anything, it’s that you never trust a pretty boy with clean fingernails, and you certainly never trust an unfamiliar name when husbands are on the line.’
Back in the lawless archipelagos, she had watched dozens of conniving vixens disguise themselves as deckhands, navigators, and high-ranking male purser-officers just to slip into a captain’s quarters undetected.
They would play the role of the loyal sworn brother, share flagons of spiced rum beneath the rigging, and then, the very second the captain’s lawful wife turned her back, they would shed the disguise and steal the man right out from under her nose.
’I need to lay my own two eyes on this bastard,’ Morwenna resolved, her fingers tightening around Tidebringer’s hilt. ’I need to verify that this Valerius actually has balls between his legs and isn’t some enchantress in a tailored coat angling for a slice of Blessed Land’s treasury and more importantly...’
A sudden sharp heat bloomed behind her leather-clad ribs, making her breath catch in her throat.
’At this rate, how the hell am I ever going to get laid with Silas?!’
The thought practically set her teeth on fire as her face went hot enough to fry an egg.
He was constantly on the move.
When he wasn’t diving headfirst into secret realms, he was negotiating treaties with the World Council, settling disputes, or handling territorial disputes between vassal seats.
The man was a hurricane of duty... If they didn’t clear this ledger early, if they didn’t get these materials secured before sundown, their window would slam shut.
’Who knows?’ Morwenna’s mind raced, her cheeks burning beneath her sun-kissed skin as a delicious wicked fantasy unspooled behind her eyelids. ’If we wrap this up cleanly by nightfall... He can dismiss Rika to rest with her little bird. Aeliana can be sent across the district on some useless errand to fetch specialty tea and then... in that sprawling penthouse suite with the panoramic starlight windows...’
She could finally corner him.
She could unbuckle Tidebringer, shed her leather armor, and wholly yield herself to her Lord.
She could finally rid herself of that wretched, mocking label Eluned loved to dangle over her head and take her rightful place as his woman.
’But none of that is happening if this blond-haired degenerate keeps dragging her heels!’ Morwenna seethed.
She glanced down at the parchment map clutched in Aeliana’s pale hands.
The humiliating truth of the matter was that Morwenna was hopelessly out of her depth when it came to navigating a modern cosmic metropolis.
She was a pirate queen... give her a star chart, a quadrant-sextant, and the smell of salt spray, and she could guide an entire raiding fleet through a hurricane without scraping a reef but here? In a city built on vertical tiers, layered overpasses, magnetic tramlines, and multi-dimensional pedestrian spirals...?
She couldn’t read the city map to save her life.
They had spent two Spirit Credits on this cursed tourist grid at the landing docks, and the only reason they had made it to this sector was because Aeliana had deciphered the street lines, only to veer off course the second she spotted a line of fellow degenerates wrapping around a marble fountain.
’At least we have the passes...’ Morwenna mused, her eyes darting toward the elevated transit lane bordering the promenade.
Sleek aerodynamic carriages painted in vibrant canary yellow and black checkers glided along the magnetic guide-rails, weaving through the traffic with sharp humming bursts of lightning mana.
The locals had called them "cabs" or "taxis."
’We can just hire one of those mechanical carriages,’ she thought, her boots shifting impatiently. ’Flash the token, tell the driver where the high-tier foundries are, and be done with it. All I need is for this elf to move her slender legs!’
"Aeliana," Morwenna pressed, stepping directly into the High Elf’s peripheral vision. "We’re wasting daylight... Look at the sun... We’ve been standing on these flagstones for forty minutes, and the line hasn’t moved ten paces."
Aeliana didn’t tear her silver-green eyes away from the velvet-roped pavilion ahead, but her pointed ears gave a slight thoughtful twitch.
A soft hum vibrated in her throat.
’She’s not wrong, we need to get this done before Valerius arrives...’ Aeliana thought, her gaze never leaving the pavilion. ’Lord Sy will be himself again by then, and thankfully I have my disguise, so I can walk around freely. I am not worried in the slightest.’
"You know, Morwenna..." Aeliana murmured, her voice sounding smooth and reasonable. "You are not incorrect... We have indeed expended a considerable quantity of precious time standing amidst the unwashed masses."
Morwenna let out a small victorious breath as her scowl softened into an approving smirk.
’Finally,’ the pirate thought, her chest swelling with relief. ’The woman’s brain finally produced a scrap of common sense... She’s finally prioritizing our Lord over—’
"Therefore," Aeliana continued with an airy graceful flick of her wide green sleeve, "we shall simply exercise our prerogative."
Click!
From the inner lining of her silk robe, Aeliana withdrew the gleaming obsidian access card Kara White had entrusted to them... the Blessed Land ID Card, shimmering with silver filigree and pulsing with the boundless credit reserves that had been promised.
Aeliana held the card between two slender manicured fingers, offering Morwenna a radiant smile.
"What is the purpose of possessing supreme authority and limitless sovereign wealth if one does not abuse it for the pursuit of enlightenment?" Aeliana whispered, her eyes gleaming with unholy fervor. "I shall simply present our territorial crest to the pavilion guards, claim priority clearance, and bypass the remaining seven hundred mortals...! We shall march straight to Master C.X.I.D.’s desk and have our masterpiece inscribed within two minutes!"
Morwenna’s jaw dropped.
Her breath froze in her throat with her eyes nearly bugging out of her skull as she stared at the black-and-silver card in the elf’s hand.
"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND?!" Morwenna shrieked, barely remembering to keep her voice down as she lunged forward, catching Aeliana by the wrist before the card could catch the light.
Three people in the queue turned to stare and Morwenna gave them a smile full of teeth until they remembered something else to look at.
The apocalyptic absurdity of it felt like a cold bucket of sea water dumped over her head.
"That card is tied directly to Blessed Land!" Morwenna hissed, her face turning a furious red as she remembered what Silas had been saying. "It has the backing of the World Council... It has enough sovereign purchasing power to buy more than three city blocks of industrial foundries, automated ballista batteries, and a fleet of cargo barges and you want to flash it in broad daylight... just to clear a line of horny mortals so you can get an autographed copy of a book about a dragon railing an elf against a rock?! Have you gone completely senile?!"
"Art knows no price, Morwenna!" Aeliana argued back with fierce indignation, her cheeks flushing a delicate pink as she tried to wrench her wrist free. "This is not mere vulgar amusement; this is the sacred codex that shall instruct me on how to properly ravish Lord Silas upon the desk... It is a strategic investment in the lineage of the future!"
"You’re a lunatic! A blond-haired tree-hugging pervert!"
Before Aeliana could drop her hood to unleash her royal lineage upon the crowd, however, the heavy murmuring of the surrounding queue suddenly shifted from eager anticipation to sharp bewildered muttering.
Rustle! Scuffle!
The tight dense formation of readers ahead began to fracture.
People were stepping out of the line, throwing their hands in the air, cursing in a dozen different regional dialects.
Aeliana blinked, her wrist going limp in Morwenna’s grip.
"What is happening?"
Morwenna frowned, craning her neck over the sea of heads.
Ten paces away, a young woman wearing thick spectacles and a scholar’s robe stamped her boot against the marble pavement, tossing a commemorative paper into a nearby trash receptacle with a disgusted scoff.
"Unbelievable," the scholar girl grumbled, adjusting her glasses with an angry push of her finger. "A complete, utter fraud."
"Excuse me, sister," Aeliana interjected, gliding forward with pristine court etiquette, though her eyes were wide with genuine dread. "What has transpired with the master’s audience?"
The scholar turned, looking at Aeliana’s hooded silhouette with a bitter sneer.