"FUCKING FINALLY!" Lilith reclined in her boss seat.
"More wine!" Thebault pronounced, raising his ale goblet and grinning like a buffoon bad at his job.
Lilith frowned at him, "we haven't even heard the news yet."
The King dropped his hand. Lilith turned back to the beautiful apparition. "Go on, my dear." In that moment, if Spectres could blush, that was certainly what was happening in the ghost girl's face. "Lily might just make her redden!" Asmodeus joked to Lucifer.
"Quiet over there, you two," Lilith chastised her brothers playfully, before returning her gaze back to the Spectre. [Female Spectres] were rare, but were considerably more powerful than the males, being that it took a higher dark mana to infuse a woman's spirit so as to refuse crossing over, and the pull of the afterlife.
The Spectre, embolded by Lilith's own command of the war room went on with her news.
"I bring glad tidings to Her Eminence, the Lady Dowager and His Majesty, the King, and the high nobilty of the Court of Whispers. I, your faithful servant was watching the black waves over the Helmsley cliffstones south of the shore front when I spotted in the distance the Red Dragon. She lay hovering over one of the little emergent isles of Corynthia.
Finding it incredibly suspicious that a [Divine] Familiar trouble herself with some island in the midst of the open sea, I flew off the headland to investigate.
I found no sign of the Apollyon, but I found this in a Cabin over by a creek. . ." The Spectre floated over, since they didn't walk—being made of smoke and all that. She handed Lilith soiled bandages rusty brown with old blood.
"The swaddlers were the only anomaly I'd found before I had to hide from the dragon's looming shadow. I couldn't afford to be seen. But I followed a trail leading up from the creek into a tributary that poured into a river; a river interconnecting several islands.
If I may add, Your Ladyship, I'm of the opinion that the Apollyon was taken to that isle by someone close enough to know where he'd be during Titans Landing, and with intimate knowledge of the isles of Corynthia.
I tracked a certain boatman, who I compelled to lead me up the river to another island where he claimed to have dropped up a strange redhaired giant and several ladies. He described this young man to be fetching and walking with a cane. Since the Apollyon was wounded greatly, I think this is the most find we've had in weeks.
This new island is about a hundred yards in the southern crest of the Cold Sea. It is quite the jungle, Your Eminence." The Spectre finished.
Her light voice funneled to a calm. The war room fell into dead silence.
No one peeped a single sound as they all stared at the dowager: Lilith was gripping to the stained bandages tightly. She held it to her nose. Diamond tears leaked out the corners of her eyes. Her black mascara smeared and she sniffed. No one had ever seen the Queen of the Night cry.
Then, in a voice so quiet she almost went unheard, she whispered;
"He's alive. My Israfel is alive. The blood on the cloth is his. I can smell him." She clutched more to the bandages, a minute later lifted her sheen of wet purple iris to the ghost girl. "Thank you. What's your name, Spectre?"
The Spectre bowed her head.
Finally, the last in the long file of Nobles walked past her hiding place. Lilith clicked out in her heels.
"Hèla?" She called.
The vampiress turned. She shrank a little in fear when she found the taller Dowager behind her. Hèla shivered and walked back. She stop a pace from Lilith.
"You saved my ass in there. You didn't out me. Thank you, Lily."
Lilith said nothing. She reminded stoic, but pained ire showed in her eyes.
"Okay, on a scale of one to ten, how angry are you?" Hèla asked.
The courts passage was now empty and they were free to talk openly. Lilith sighed up to the baroque arches and its kingly gilden architecture. "I'm not angry at you, Hèla. You saved him. You saved Israfel. I wondered and worried for a long time who picked him up from Emberfall's ashes that night.
I hoped to heaven that he didn't fall into the wrong hands. I'm glad it was you.
I'm angry you kept me out the loop. Why didn't you tell me?"
Hèla walked closer still and took Lilith's hands in hers. "I'm sorry. Tensions were still high in the city when I took him. We had just conquered Eldoria, and I didn't want Thebault thinking his victory wasn't absolute. Not until Israfel was far, faraway from him. I'm sorry I didn't tell you.
I wanted to.
I flew him across the Cold Sea and left him I'm Sekhmet's care on that island. She owes me."
Lilith tucked back a strand of Hèla's full, red hair.
"Oh! But now that his cover's blown, we need to extract him."
Hèla nodded. "I'll have my Familiar, Myreen divert the King's wraiths."
"Thank you," Lilith grinned. "I'll send in my mighty ones. The dark and dreaded, to secure him for the time being until we're able to finish his extraction. They'd be undercover."
"I couldn't have done it any better." The vampiress smiled back, and drew in and kissed Lilith full and heavy on the mouth, with tongue. A few seconds later, she pulled back. "Are we still on for tonight?"
"Of course," said the dowager. "Bring in another, preferably a male. I like variety."
Laughing, both voluptuous [MILF]s left the war room and its grim courts behind.