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Chapter 1302 1302 The Aes Issue

"Hmm… well I suppose the first thing that comes to mind is also rather obvious in the retelling. Still, it was amusing for me. This was a request put up by a eccentric enchanter. They were… well other members of my team assure me that they were actually quite smart, and perhaps a genius in their field… 

"But I found them to be a bit of an airhead. Her name was Floura and it's hard to tell how old she was. Floura was an elf you see… but perhaps the least elf-like elf I'd ever seen. She was clumsy, constantly wore these massive baggy coats that were stained with who know's what. Her ears were… smaller then I'd expect of an elf, but there was a lot of scaring on them despite obviously being healed so I never asked why…" 

March trailed off as she saw Marigold wince. Marigold sighed again when she saw a few people turning towards her. "Yeah… we aaah… we have a bit of a problem with people I like to call the 'Anti-Elf Sect' which is not their name at all but I feel like it suits them. They're… well essentially they're terrorists that like to bother my Dad from time to time. 

"They actually call themselves 'The League of True Elves' but they've caused more elf causalities then literally anyone else except the great war… and even then, if you start to count injuries instead they probably come out on top. They are a blight on the elven kingdoms… but they are also really hard to track down and properly stamp out. 

"They have… layers like an onion. I promise this will seem relevant in a minute. Anyway, they have grunts, usually young elves that don't like Dad for whatever reason. It's not a tonne of people, but they don't do anything too crazy usually. They just form up into little spy groups. Technically they don't do anything wrong but they pass news on you know? 

"The Aes, which yes I do pronounce 'ass' because that was the point of using such an obscure word like 'sect' as a descriptor, tend to just keep one or two of these low level elves in the cities and have them pass on news. It's hard to prosecute these guys because it's really easy to claim they didn't know they were working for Aes. Which is usually true in only the most misleading of ways. 

"Then above those, you have… I suppose you can call them enforcers? They wonder around and do a bit of rabble rousing. It's usually nothing too bad, just general stuff they can try and get away with. Destruction of property like setting fire to a field or a shopfront. Breaking a whole bunch of windows. Things that are annoying, and potentially quite devastating, but easy for hit and run. 

"They don't tend to steal much because then we might be able to track them better, and a lot of the fires are made to look like accidents. I could talk for a lot longer about their tactics, but I realise I'm already massively derailing the conversation… um do you guys mind?" 

A round of knows echoed through the room so Marigold continued. "Right, well above that are the 'recruiters' which is a nice name for a truly horrible level. They tend to be pretty powerful, upper rank 2 for their lowest levels. What they do is go and approach particularly outstanding elves and try to convince them to join up… 

"And well… the standard response to 'no' as an answer is cutting off half of the ears of the elf who refuses and then cauterising the wound shut so that they can't just be reattached. Sometimes they'll burn the other half in front of the person… it's pretty horrific. That's… probably why the enchanters ears were scarred like that. 

"We try to offer what help we can as part of the royal family, but… we don't do it for free anymore. We used to heal anyone who was attacked by the bastards but well… they then started chopping ears of whole villages, flooding us with requests for healing and we couldn't keep up. 

"So we had to prioritise, and the wounds were never fatal so we offered healing faster for people who would either pay for it themselves, or those who would sign on to work for the government. Which is kinda shitty… but we just didn't have the people. Elf ears are hard to heal at the best of times and having the wound cauterised like that makes it much, much harder. There are only like two healers we trust in the whole kingdom to do it properly and we're talking hundreds of injuries that take hours at a time to heal,"

Marigold sighed. "Anyway as soon as we started charging people the attacks died right down and then suddenly they were smearing us for 'not caring up the common people' and that they were 'stepping back to prevent undue harm to the elven populous' as if they aren't the ones CUTTING EARS OF," 

Marigold was breathing heavily and practically fuming so Vanya distracted her with a kiss. Burnice took over from there, "Yeah they aren't great and Marigold is more than a little sore about it. Anyway, that's probably why the inventor's ears were scarred… and a lot of elves hate to talk about it. 

"For them, it's a great shame. Elf ears are important. The idea of 'allowing' your ears to be cut off is… well there is a lot of social stigma around it from further back in our history. It used to be what we'd do to murders and rapists. They'd have their ears cut down and then they'd be banished from the kingdom but we don't do that anymore, Auctifer has never done that… 

"But socially, a lot of elves remember it. So even though it's not a punishment the government uses anymore… it's still got quite the stigma attached to it. I don't find it rational at all… and it helps those Aes bastards, but…" Burnice finished speaking with a shrug. 

Kat chewed her lips and gave Lily a look. She really wanted to ask but… it seemed really rude. Burnice seemed to pick up on it though and said, "We don't know how they can avoid us. There are guesses, they have someone at the top, perhaps the person who runs the whole organisation and they have something that lets the group hide from Auctifer and Artema. 

"We just don't know exactly what kind of magic it is. Definitely enchantments of some kind, but we're not sure beyond that. The Aes have always been very careful to keep that secret out of our hands despite the years they've been operating. They've committed suicide and killed off their own people to keep that secret before," 

Kat winced. "So… no sending someone like Thyme in to get them?" 

Marigold was no longer distracted and so could answer, "I once asked the same thing actually. The problem is we don't know how strong the leader is or where they are. Imagine if they're hidden under a city, and their leader is rank 5. Suddenly you force them out of hiding, a fights starts… and then boom no more city. We stop them where we can, and we do search hard for where their main base is… but without knowing for sure that their leader is weak, or that the base isn't in a populated area it's really hard to force the issue," 

"That seems like a real problem… how do you even deal with something like that?" asked Lily. 

Marigold shrugged and said, "Well… it really depends. The easiest way is to catch them off guard in their sleep. That's super rare though. The most realistic way is to find them and then drag them as far away from the city as you can. Most people aren't completely evil and are willing to let it happen when they get caught like that… but not all. The fact that the Aes are so horrible implies that they'd have no issues just… taking a city hostage if they could," 

"That makes me wonder why they don't just take a city hostage," said Kat. 

"Sort of the same reason we don't just force the issue. If they took a city hostage we'd know where they were, and we could call in ALL the power houses, not just those in the elf kingdom but in the human kingdom as well. Heck, if it was a big enough issue Ulf might even show up to help," Marigold explained. "It's probably the most self-defeating thing the Aes can do…

"Because if they push that much, we can push back. A lot of people would die for certain, and we'd love to avoid something like that entirely… but if it was already happening it would be a chance to end things. Just not one we want to force,"