A disturbing letter from the capital arrives...

The festivities were in full swing when a commotion at the entrance of the hall brought the celebration to an abrupt pause. A young servant stumbled in, his chest heaving from his exertion. "Your Highness," he called out, his voice high and strained with urgency. "I have a letter, it's of the utmost importance! You need to read this!!!"

The sultan, whose mood had been as jovial as the rest of the party, turned to look at the trembling young man. His expression grew serious as he took the letter. "What is it?" he demanded, his eyes narrowed. "This better be worth it or you'll pay with your head!"

Still trembling, the young servant handed the letter to the sultan and added "There has been a coup in the capital!!!"

With these words, the whole room went silent. The musicians stopped playing, the dancers stopped dancing and the sultan began to feel unwell and breathing heavily. Jafar, who was closer to the servant and saw that the sultan was too overwhelmed with stress to read the letter, took it himself and read it:

"

To the provinces,

It is with the deepest regrets that I inform you that our dear Sultan Al-Rahman and his daughter, Princess Aisha have both been killed in an ambush by the Sahar tribe as they were going to Jabit to wed the princess to the local governor, Jafar. There are no words to describe the grief and anger that are going through my heart at the moment and I promise you this treason will be avenged.

Now, this empire will require a new sultan to lead it and, before his ****, the sultan had made it clear that in the event both Aisha and him would die before Aisha got married, he wished for the leader of the Royal Inquisition (me) to take his place. It is with great sorrow, and for the good of the sultanate, that I abide by his wishes and agree to take his throne with all the responsibilities that come with it. May God grant me the wisdom to rule these lands with as much fairness as Al-Rahman did.

Due to the instability of the current situation, the capital is closed until further notice. No one will be allowed in or out without explicit permission. Each province governor will be invited to swear fealty to me one at a time. Do not leave your home province beforehand.

It is my firm belief that, under my leadership, we will finish what Al-Rahman started and finally purge magic from these lands once and for all. Some of you might have heard of the Faceless One, this powerful and enigmatic wizard who leads a terrorist magic cult. This man will be brought to justice and done away with permanently. I make that promise before God and before you, my brothers.

Peace be upon you, my new subjects,

Ibrahim Zakaria

Former Leader of the Royal Inquisition and New Sultan of Arabia

"

As Jafar finished reading the letter, shouts of "TREASON!" or "**** TO THE USURPER! **** TO ZAKARIA!!!" started filling the room. As soon as Jafar was done reading, he looked at the crowd and said "Guards, take away him, him, him, him, and her!" as he pointed towards seemingly random people. As soon as he pointed at them, they started running away. Jafar knew all along who they were. They were covert agents of the Royal Inquisition and were most possibly complicit in this coup attempt. Most of them were caught before they left the room, but one or two of them got away, with the guards chasing them in the halls of the palace.

After identifying the traitors, Jafar turned to the sultan who was still breathing heavily. Al-Rahman placed his hand on his heart as it seemed to ache, before collapsing onto the ground almost immediately afterwards.

"FATHER!" screamed Aisha as she reached down to him "We need a doctor! GET US A DOCTOR RIGHT NOW!!!"

Her voice echoed through the hall, cutting through the chaos like a knife. The room was a blur of shock and confusion, with whispers of treason and usurpation rippling through the crowd like a dark tide. But amidst the turmoil, Natasha, who had been quietly watching from the shadows, stepped forward with purpose. Her medical training had prepared her for moments like these. She started to tend to the sultan as best as she could, instructing everyone to step away from him to allow him to breathe. Aisha was difficult to convince, but Jafar stepped in and convinced her it was for the good of her father.

As Natasha was giving the sultan a cardiac massage, Jafar thought of the situation. How did this happen? He had an army of female spies who could communicate telepathically and he didn't see that coming? Zafira and the others would have some explaining to do, but for now, the most important thing was keeping himself, his wife, his stepfather and his guests safe. He didn't know about Zakaria's coup in advance, but now, he could tell from a mile away what his next move was going to be. Zakaria obviously knew that Al-Rahman had survived the Sahar ambush, which he was almost certainly responsible for. Despite the distance, it was impossible for someone as well informed as the head of the sultan's secret services to have remained unaware of Al-Rahman's survival for as much as three weeks after the fact. This letter was simply an attempt by Zakaria to spread rumors and sow confusion, hoping that some provincial governors would rally to his side before the sultan could prove his survival. However, Jafar was not stupid. He knew full well that Zakaria would not allow Al-Rahman to have an opportunity to do so. The sultan, his daughter, her new husband and three provincial governors were all gathered in the same room. They were too good of a target. It was clear that assassins were days, hours, minutes or even seconds away.

Without wasting any time, Jafar took command. "Guards, seal the doors!" he bellowed, his voice cutting through the panic that had begun to spread through the room. The guards looked to him for guidance, and his expression was one of cold, hard steel. The doors to the grand hall were heavy, made of solid oak reinforced with iron bands, but they swung shut with surprising ease as the guards rushed to obey. "Barricade them!" he continued, pointing to the doors. "Now! There might be assassins coming our way at any minute!"

The room was suddenly a flurry of activity. Guests scrambled to move tables and chairs to block the exits, while the more capable individuals helped the guards push heavy wooden chests against the doors. The clatter of metal and wood was the only sound that could be heard over the pounding of their hearts and the roar of the wind outside. The atmosphere had shifted from one of jovial celebration to one of dire urgency.

"Stop eating!" Jafar's voice boomed through the grand hall, as he saw some guests who continued eating their meal, which was not only disrespectful to this whole situation, but dangerous as well. "The food may be poisoned! It might be because of that that our dear sultan collapsed"

"Nyet, master!" said Natasha "the sultan simply had a heart attack, probably triggered by the stress brought upon him by the news. I've managed to stabilize him. He will survive for now."

The room breathed a collective sigh of relief and the tension dissipated slightly. Aisha, tears streaming down her face, threw herself into Natasha's arms, her body trembling with emotion. "Thank you," she whispered fervently, "Thank you for saving my father."

At the sight of this, Jafar smiled and said "Don't eat regardless. We'd better be safe than sorry." Jafar then took control of the domesticated snakes that were hidden throughout the palace. His goal was to spot anything suspicious, any assassin coming their way. He led one of the snakes to the grand kitchen where the dessert was being prepared. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until a young man approached the enormous cake as the cooks were distracted by their other preparations and he emptied a small vial of liquid on it. Jafar knew that man all too well. He was a double agent of the Royal Inquisitors working as one of his guards. Zakaria had many of them in the palace of every single province governor. Their role was to spy on their masters and to report any potential magical activities back to Zakaria, but today, it seemed that one's role was to **** his master by poisoning him and although he didn't know it yet, he had already failed. All because the letter got to Jafar before the dessert. A bad timing that not even someone as powerful as Jafar would have survived without. He found this realization pretty humbling.

"My pets," Jafar whispered telepathically to his female guards. "A royal inquisitor has tried to poison me. He is trying to leave the palace as we speak. I'm sending you his location directly to your minds. Catch him and end him quietly and efficiently! Then, move on to the others. We've known about all those Royal Inquisitors hiding among us for years and the only reason we didn't get rid of them is that we could not do so without arousing suspicion from the sultan, but now, it's time. Kill them! Kill them all!!! Except for Sara, we'll need her!"

"Yes master!!! It will be done!" they all thought back to him in unison.

Jafar had been caught off guard by Zakaria as the latter had tried to **** the former by poisoning him, but he had no idea Jafar was the Faceless One and that the magical powers he had could easily allow him to foil most of those basic **** attempts, but Jafar's greatest weapon was his mind control kiss. If Zakaria and the sultan knew about it, none of them would have ever trusted any woman again, but they mistakenly thought Jafar needed to actually be in a woman's body to control her thoughts and actions and that gave him a huge advantage. By kissing a woman, just once, he could make her his obedient and loyal **** for the rest of her life. She would never ever betray him, which is why he even started training some women in combat and hiring them as guards and assassins. He knew he could count on them. The only thing that held him back from doing it on a wider scale was the cultural taboo around women serving in the military. That's exactly the kind of thing that could arouse suspicion, so he tried to conceal his small army of women from the sultan and Zakaria, sometimes going as far as to have the women wear fake beards while on guard duty.

Since the kissed women could communicate telepathically, they could exchange information without the use of any document or even conversations. That allowed Jafar to secretly find out the identity of every double agent Zakaria had sent to watch him without them ever noticing and to mislead them whenever he could. One of those double agents, the Sara he ordered his guards to spare, was a woman and that was the perfect gift to him. He kissed her and that allowed him to use her to feed false information directly to Zakaria and to gain a lot of real information on the inquisition by scanning her memories.

Zakaria may have thought he had outplayed the sultan and Jafar, but he was wrong. In a matter of minutes, all Royal Inquisitors in Jafar's palace that were not Sara were killed by his guards or bitten by his snakes. The guy who poisoned the cake was the first, being surrounded by strange armed women. He tried to defend himself, but it was no use. He was cut down in seconds. His body was then promptly taken away to be buried in the desert and the floor was quickly cleaned of his blood.

The palace was now firmly under the control of Jafar, though his guests didn't know it yet.