"I see… solid move. With Katerea in full command of what's left of the Royal Guard, you should definitely have an elite squad that answers directly to you."
Picking up her glass from the beside table on her side of the bed, Lilith took another sip of wine before setting the glass back down, and adjusting her position on the bed slightly as she looked over at Raylix, who picked up his own whiskey-glass and took a gulp from it himself.
"Thought you'd say that." He remarked, shifting slightly closer to Lilith as he set his glass back down on the table on his side. "One of them probably told you this already, I know they've got direct lines to you via some magic mirrors- I think?- Anyway, I've also been getting to know Hikari and Kurumi pretty… eh, intimately."
Raylix let out a small chuckle, and Lilith's smile only grew slightly.
"Ever since you helped Kurumi out with her body, and when Hikari bloomed, we got active to say the least. Think I've banged Kurumi… five, times, and Hikari three. And that's counting the threesome we had last night, so… yeah, I think I'm getting back into it a little, if you know what I mean."
"I absolutely do." Lilith replied, shifting herself closer still to Raylix. "And threesomes with Hikari and Kurumi… sounds hot. I might have to join in with the two of them, sometime."
"Oh, shit…" Raylix whispered to himself, moving his legs slightly. Lilith's eyes flicked down slightly, and she noticed a VERY visible- no matter how he tried to hide it- tent pitching in her lover's pants, as well as a light pink dusting forming within his cheeks.
He liked that idea, Lilith could tell. Hell, he LOVED that idea, she could practically HEAR the sudden waves of arousal flying off of him from when she'd said the last few words. Arousal that had been there ever since he clapped eyes back on her, only a few minutes after her return. Arousal that, once they were done talking through everything she felt they needed to talk through, she'd be MORE than happy to help him work through.
"How about the others, though?" she asked. "Katerea, Irene, Tamamo… as fun as it would be for you to be the family boytoy, you shouldn't feel limited to just myself and my daughters."
Raylix exhaled through his nose, grabbing one of the pillows behind him and adjusting its position slightly, before leaning back on it a little more comfortably.
"I'd say some progress has been made." He replied. "Bit less than I'd have liked to, and under kind-of… fluke-y circumstances."
When Lilith merely raised an eyebrow, he continued.
"Talked with Tamamo, this morning. Things just kind of… naturally led in that direction. She was upset while remembering her past, I comforted her, she glomped me and probably would've screwed me right there in the kitchen had I not… eh, never mind what happened last night. Point is, I don't see something like that happening with any of the others."
"Yeah, you might actually have to put some serious effort into mending things with them." Lilith remarked, holding back a giggle. "Have you considered asking Eve for a hand… or word? She's pretty good when it comes to that sort of stuff, got a much stronger sense of people's emotions than a lot of people think."
Raylix nodded.
"Ran into her before I had that chat with Tamamo."
The giggle that Lilith had been holding back finally broke out from between her lips.
"Disregard what I said, then." She remarked. "Since you seem able to take initiative on that front."
Raylix let out a small chuckle himself, lying back on the pillow.
"But never mind that, for now." Lilith spoke, setting her glass back down. "Before I left…"
Raylix felt himself tensing up slightly, and couldn't resist the urge to swallow.
"We talked a bit, didn't we?" Lilith continued, turning and shifting herself slightly so she was facing Raylix a little more head-on, rather than just being next to him. "I asked you something, and you said you'd have an answer ready for me when I came back, you remember?"
Damn right, Raylix did. He'd been thinking about it ever since the morning Lilith left, and had decided on what his answer was going to be ever since a little bit after that.
This was it, the moment of truth.
He opened his mouth, ready to give the answer in question, but before any sound could even come out, he hesitated, slowly closed it again, cleared his throat as he looked away from Lilith and down at his legs.
'So much for trying to get the words out smoothly', he thought to himself. He didn't see it, wrapped up in his self-criticism as he was at that second, but he'd have seen Lilith flashing him a knowing smirk if he did.
Clenching his teeth and taking a couple of short breaths in an attempt to psyche himself up, Raylix looked back up at Lilith. She was just waiting, her expression patient as she leaned over to pick her glass back up and take another sip from it. Feeling his throat getting slightly dry himself, Raylix imitated her, reaching over to grab the glass on his side to take a gulp of whiskey… and before he knew it, he'd drained the entire rest of its contents in one go.
Looking down into the glass and chuckling to himself at the sight of it now empty, he set it back down on his beside table, and looked back over at the Lilim Queen. Rolling his shoulders a bit, he opened his mouth again, doing his damndest to keep himself as calm as possible now that the question that would change him forever- lock him into the path he'd started down for good, even if he didn't know it yet- finally came out.
"…Wanna get married?"
…
Almost immediately, Raylix internally cringed. That was no way to ask such an important question, straight to the face of one of the most important people to ever live. He hadn't meant for it to slip out that casually, but… damn it.
There wasn't any taking it back, just await how Li-
"Sure."
Raylix blinked, jolted from his internal self-kicking as he met Lilith's eyes, took in what she'd just said. Saw the slightest of blushes forming under her cheeks, noticed the beginnings of a truly overjoyed smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Seemed he wasn't the only one trying to stay casual and calm, here.
But before he could say, or even do anything else, Lilith set her glass down, shifted towards Raylix, sprouting her horns and tails and wrapping all seven of the latter, as well as her arms, around him. After a second or so, Raylix did the same with his own arms, swallowing again as he felt himself pressed up against Lilith.
There was silence between Devil and Succubus for a moment as they just held each other. They moved, seemingly as one, down onto the bed rather than just being sat on it, which Raylix didn't realise until he felt his side on the mattress, the side of his face on one of her pillows. Loosening her grip on him slightly, Lilith shifted down a little so her face was on more of a level with his.
"I'd love to get married, Raylix." She repeated, one of her signature small smiles crossing her face as she moved one of her hands up to the back of Raylix's head, gently stroking his hair. "You won't believe how happy I am that you thought the same."
Raylix let out a small chuckle, shifting his head a little bit further into Lilith's grip as she ran her fingers through his auburn locks.
"The way I asked kinda sucked, though." He remarked, his voice soft as he looked down for a couple of seconds, before back up into Lilith's eyes. "You're… you're you, for hell's sake. And- and we've only really known each other for a few months at most, never mind that I don't even have a damn ring to give you."
He didn't hear Lilith's small giggle as he let out a sigh, pulled himself out of his now-fiancée's embrace and sat up, scratching the back of his neck.
"Worst proposal in history, by a mile." He remarked, more to himself than anything.
Following Raylix back into a sitting position, Lilith reached over, laying a hand on one of Raylix's and prompting him to look back over at her.
"You think I give a shit about how you did it?" she asked. "Especially compared to how anyone else might do it?"
Raylix blinked, as Lilith shifted over, leaned forward slightly to press her forehead against his.
"You think it might have been the worst, but I'd definitely call it one of the best." She continued, her voice just as soft as her now-fiancé's had been a minute ago. "Definitely the best I've ever had, at least. Much better than some super-extravagant or lavish gift and a note asking me to consider saying yes that I get at least once a decade from people like Zeus or Odin."
Pulling back a little, she took her wine glass and, like he'd unintentionally done, drained the last of her drink before setting it back down.
"Don't beat yourself up, Raylix. Yours was perfect." She spoke, moving back towards him. It was probably the dress, or at least a combination of it and what specifically was being contained IN the dress, but Raylix's eyes couldn't help but flick down a little as he saw Lilith's cleavage bouncing a little bit, in response to her movements. He'd been trying to stop himself from gawping down there ever since he'd warped back into the compound earlier, but catching that movement out of the corner of his eye was just too enticing to NOT want to get a better look at, even for a second.
When he dragged his eyes back up, though, into Lilith's eyes, he widened slightly at how the expression in them had shifted, in the short second he'd been looking away from them. Soft, affectionate, half-motherly half-romantic love seemed to have vacated them, in place of some kind of dark amusement, and pure unadulterated lust.
"You're perfect…" Lilith whispered, raising one hand to his chest and gently taking a hold of his shirt, while lowering the other to the tent that had stood strong between his legs the entire time. "And I think that, you know, now that we're engaged… we should celebrate"
Raylix openly and audibly gulped as Lilith suddenly pulled him closer by his shirt, making him drop right onto her. Her tails moved around him again, making sure he couldn't pull away this time.
"Don't you~?"
Raylix was so aroused he could barely speak. Only nod, shuddering from the tingles that hearing Lilith's voice in THAT tone, THAT close to his ear triggered throughout his entire body.
"Knew you'd agree~" Lilith replied, shifting both herself and Raylix down onto her bed again, with her lying back against the pillows while her auburn-haired fiancé laid on her chest. After a couple of seconds, Raylix lifted his head up from inside the valley between her breasts, his eyes shaking slightly in their sockets as he looked into Lilith's. Lilith looked back for a couple of seconds, lifting a hand and running it through his hair for a couple of seconds before letting it rest behind his head.
Lilith moved first, taking a firmer grip on the back of Raylix's head and suddenly pulling it- and his entire body- forward. She leaned upward slightly, making his lips land on hers as she rested her other hand at the small of his back, ensuring he couldn't pull back. Not that Raylix seemed to want to, given how he leaned into the kiss the second he'd processed that it was even happening in the first place, began moving his hands across the top of her dress, across her waist and back, slipped his hands UNDER her dress to directly get at the skin underneath.
But before he could get too far with that, Lilith pulled back herself, moving the hand at Raylix's back around to his chest to gently push him away from her.
"No… heh, no need for that, Ray." She whispered, her voice low. "I've got a way that won't result in this dress getting torn up… I kind of like this one."
Smiling, she lifted her other hand and snapped her fingers to warp both her AND his clothes right off their bodies, leaving the pair of them totally naked.
"Better~" the first Succubus purred, before letting Raylix drop back onto her and resume the makeout session they'd started. "Mmh- mwah~ -mm- ohh, Ray~"
Without her even realising it, Raylix had slipped one of his hands down her body, in-between her legs to get at her exposed pussy. With what seemed to be a practiced ease, he'd already slipped two fingers into her opening and got his thumb rested on her clit, gently rubbing at it as he began to slowly finger her.
"Someone's eager…" Lilith remarked, giggling through her moans. "How about we- hmm~ -Raylix?"
Raylix hummed, looking up as he pulled his fingers slightly backwards, half-out of Lilith's pussy. That moment of waiting, of hesitation, was all the opening Lilith needed to pounce, fully re-establish dominance over the situation: sprouting her tails and quickly wrapping them around Raylix to hold him in place, she moved herself backwards, removing her pussy from around his fingers and shifted herself into a sitting position, opening up her legs and moving Raylix within her tails to give him a front-row view to her wet snatch.
"Since you're so eager…" Lilith whispered, moving Raylix closer to her with her tails and reaching out to gently rub the top of his head, before moving him downwards and depositing him between her legs, so his face was right up against her pussy. "How about you give your dear fiancée and Goddess," she let out a little giggle mid-sentence "a little demonstration of just how 'back into it' you've gotten, huh~?"
Raylix couldn't help but blush, his heart almost sinking at the realisation that Lilith was probably NEVER going to let that particular word go, as far as the context of it between the two of them were concerned, as his eyes shifted towards the glistening pussy a few inches from his face.
After a couple of seconds, he rested his hands against Lilith's upper-thighs, opened his mouth and moved forward.
-----
Irene loved the library that had been constructed as part of the URF's new compound.
Actually, scratch that. She absolutely ADORED the library that had been constructed as part of the URF's new compound.
Consisting of three rooms, each packed on top of each other across one side of the compound and all connected by one long, winding staircase grander than the main staircases of most extravagant human-world homes, each singular room packed to the RAFTERS with tomes of all kinds on pretty much any topic one could imagine wanting… she'd have came under her loincloth had any magical tutor of hers in her youth sported any kind of studying facilities even CLOSE to this level.
Sat in one of the chairs by the fire in the middle of the three rooms that made up the library (putting herself on the fourth floor), Irene adjusted her position slightly as she laid the book she'd pulled out a few minutes ago on the table between herself and the only other person in the room, pointing to a diagram of a magic-circle on the page.
"You'll see how this base version doesn't account for any ambient magic that you might find wherever you might be casting." She explained to Cinder. "Compare it to this," she raised a free hand and formed a magic-circle in it. "See any differences?"
"Uh…" Cinder leaned forward slightly, looking from the circle in the book to the one floating in Irene's hand. "There's, uh- a few of those special symbols you mentioned a few days ago?"
"Glyphs, yes." Irene nodded, raising the hand she'd been using to hold the book on the table open to gesture to the glyphs in question Cinder meant. "These ones, specifically… how do I put this simply… act as magnets to latent mana in the air, drawing it into your circle and amplifying the strength of any spell you might want to form and enact with it. Helps lighten the load on your personal reserves a fair bit, depending on where you are, so it's good in a pinch. I'd recommend starting to learn how to do circles like these sooner, rather than later: with how young you are, it'll definitely be easier for you to re-learn how to cast through these," she gestured with one hand to the complex circle before dispelling it with her other hand, and leaning back in her chair. "Than it was when I started learning. Almost got myself demoted down to B-Class because of poor performance, I was that dedicated."
"Damn." Cinder let out a breath. "You think, uh… wait, never mind, you're probably busy…"
"I'll do it." Irene nodded. "Don't worry, Platinums aren't THAT busy with stuff strictly relating to Magician business. It's just overseeing your Guild and the occasional meeting of the Magicians' Council, to be honest, and they only become super-frequent when there's a new Sorcerer Supreme in town."
She stretched in her chair, uncrossing and recrossing her legs as she looked over at Cinder, whose surprise at her quick answer was plastered all over her face.
"You'll definitely have to dedicate yourself to more independent study than most Magicians' your age have to, with me as your tutor." Irene remarked. "But I promise you, you'll grow faster than anyone else. Give it a few years and you'll be unrecognisable compared to that teenage Stray in rags that Raylix and I found."
Cinder let out a small giggle, blushing slightly at the remark.
"Thanks, Irene." She nodded, leaning forward before standing up. "Oh wait, shit, should I call you Mist-"
"Nope, no, absolutely not." Irene shook her head, cutting Cinder off before she could even finish her question. "We've known each other long enough, it'd just feel weird to use that term in a teaching context now. Maybe if you come to me asking for tips in the bedroom, but otherwise…" she trailed off, the faintest trace of a scowl crossing her face for a second before she seemed to catch herself, and shook her head.
"Right… got it." Cinder nodded, as Irene stood up herself. Before either of them could continue the conversation, the sound of footsteps on the stairs below the two Magicians' met their ears. A couple of seconds later, the top of Kurumi's head met their eyes, followed by the rest of her.
Tucking a strand of her undone hair behind her ear, Kurumi looked over, and upon visually clocking Irene and Cinder, immediately made her way over.
"Something the matter, Kurumi?" Irene asked, picking up the book from the table, shutting it and waving her hand to return it to its place on a shelf on the other side of the room. "And is that shirt one of Ray-"
"Mom wants a word." Kurumi replied, stretching her arms a bit. As her impressive, relatively new set of tits bounced behind the AC/DC t-shirt she was wearing- which earned her the faintest trace of a scowl from Cinder, whose eyes she spotted following the movements of her chest- she turned around. "Up in her office. She wants everyone up there, told me she's got something to go over with everyone. Says it's important."
Irene and Cinder shared a short look with each other, before looking back at Kurumi, who was already making for the stairs that would take them to the top room of the library.
"Now?" Cinder asked.
"Now!" Kurumi called as confirmation, not even turning back to face Irene and Cinder or even breaking stride. "Top floor, let's go!"
Sharing another look with each other, Irene and Cinder made to follow Kurumi to the stairs, up the stairs, across the library's top room, out of said top room's doors into the top floor's hallway, down the hallway towards Lilith's office, the door to which Kurumi knocked at before opening the door. Irene and Cinder followed her through the door that Kurumi held open for them, moved past her as the Phantasmal Chronograph wielder leaned up against the doorframe.
They weren't the first ones here: Lilith herself, obviously, was sat behind her desk, nursing a half-full wine glass in one hand and looking ever the regal figure she always had been. Sat beside her was Raylix, looking… less so. His hair rather tousled, his shirt somewhat undone, an absent- vaguely satisfied look splayed across his face as he sipped from a glass filled with milk.
Irene doubted there were any prizes for guessing where that milk had come from, as she nodded in greeting to Lilith before taking a seat on a couch near the bookshelf, with Cinder plopping down next to her. Looking across to the other side of the office, she spotted Malech and Katerea, who had looked up from the other couch at her, Cinder and Kurumi entering, but afterwards had gone back to the hushed conversation they seemed to have been having before they'd arrived.
It didn't take long for the others to arrive: Hikari made her way through the door a minute or so later, accompanied by Esdeath and Tamamo. The latter two perched on either side of the couch that Irene and Cinder had taken the main area of, while the White Dragon Empress took a spot on the other side of the doorframe, and shut the door.
When that was done, Lilith took a sip of her wine before setting it down on her desk, and rose slightly in her chair.
"Alright." she spoke, immediately quietening all other speech in the room, and drawing all attention to her. "Just wanted to call this little meeting because… I feel now that things have stabilized in the URF, and now that I'm back from working at my real job," she allowed herself a small giggle "I feel it's time to get started with making the changes needed to bring the URF into the future. And I want all my closest colleagues," she looked out across and around the room, pausing for a second before continuing. "On the same page. My daughters, obviously, will know most of what's about to be discussed today, so this is just for the sake of bringing you all up to speed. We clear?"
There were nods around the room, a few murmurs of "Yup." and "Uh-huh.", but no dissent.
Nodding, Lilith reached up, began twirling a lock of her raven-black hair around one of her fingers.
"Okay." She spoke. "Starting out, this mainly concerns you, Katerea, and Raylix. Since this faction is no longer a Devil-centric initiative in the True Satan Faction, but a fully UNDERWORLD-spanning movement, I think we should endeavour to reflect that in our outreach. Not just Devils should feel welcome here in Hebeth, but Lilim, too. That sound reasonable to you?"
Raylix nodded, taking a small swig from his milk-glass. Katerea nodded as well, murmuring "Yup." As she did so. The others, even though they were less directly involved, seemed to find the idea reasonable judging by their visible reactions (or rather, lack of negative reasons) to Lilith's decree.
"Good." Lilith nodded, leaning forward slightly. "Now, for the second- and admittedly more important- matter: the destruction of the Khaos Brigade."
Even though everyone (except Hikari and Kurumi) was seated and stationary, everyone could feel Lilith's office becoming a little bit more still. Tense, even.
No-one really knew what to say in response to that declaration at first, especially when given pretty much everything the First Succubus had said about the Khaos Brigade, prior to today.
"Their entire leadership structure." Lilith continued, as if nothing had changed within the room. "I need them gone. Reduced to ashes. With the help of the URF."
And the room returned to silence. Not for long enough for Lilith to have to break it herself, though, with Katerea- the first outside of Lilith to find her voice since her new declaration regarding the Khaos Brigade- speaking up first.
"Wait… what?"
All eyes turned to the tanned brunette as she rose to her feet.
"You planning on telling us what the hell's changed?" the granddaughter of Leviathan asked, a subtle tension entering her voice. "I'm no Elaphunt, but I seem to remember you telling Shalba, Creuserey and myself about how useful the Khaos Brigade could be in aiding us against the nobles and their fraud government."
Lilith raised a brow, but didn't interrupt.
"Hell, not even a month ago, you made that whole song-and-dance speech to the entire URF about how the goal- our shared goal- was to build a new world, promised that as many people as possible in Hebeth on that day would make it there alive. I'm not the only one who remembered that, right?" she asked, to the room at large.
Raylix shuffled in his seat slightly, setting his half-empty glass of Lilith's tit-milk down on her desk as he looked over at his fiancée.
"No, I remember that too." He replied. "Didn't you tell me not long before that- and I quote- that your ideals and the Khaos Brigade's just happened to line up?"
Lilith nodded, leaning back in her chair slightly, appearing almost relaxed even as Katerea's violet eyes bored into her red.
"I did." She replied, casually brushing a speck of dust off her dress as she met Tsufaame's daughter's gaze.
"So, was it all a lie?" Katerea asked. "Ushering in a revolution that we'd all desire, that whole pitch you gave me, Shalba and Creuserey the day before you waltzed in, took the faction over-"
"With your and my help." Raylix remarked, under his breath.
"-were you all just bullshitting us?" the tanned she-Devil continued, her eyes narrowing. From his seated position in the office, Raylix saw Hikari and Kurumi behind everyone, sharing a silent look with one another, noticed the pair of them physically tensing up ever-so-slightly.
Lilith seemed to notice that too, judging by how her eyes flicked past Katerea for the slightest moment, which Hikari and Kurumi took notice of in term as she non-verbally addressed them. As quickly as they'd tensed up, Lilith's daughters relaxed, sharing another look with each other as Lilith looked back at Katerea.
She exhaled softly, closing her eyes before responding.
"No." she replied. "It wasn't a lie. I wasn't 'bullshitting' you, as you'd call it, Katerea. What you have to understand about the Khaos Brigade, and those who seek them out with the intention of joining their ranks, is that that exact line- or something to that effect- about becoming part of a worldwide revolution, is what's fed to every single prospective member. Quite convincingly so… what I told you was true, from that certain point of view."
Either not noticing or not acknowledging the half-snort Raylix let out from beside her, Lilith picked up her glass again, swirled its contents around in her hand a couple of times as she opened her eyes.
"And what you have to understand about Shalim, Seth and Xiuhtecuhtli, the three Gods that call themselves the Brigade's commanders-in-chief," she continued. "Something that not many people know about them- mainly because they're so far out of the public eye nowadays that few even know they're still around, is that they're angry. Obsessively so, in fact, thanks to what their pantheons have come to."
"Shalim… that's the Dusk God of the Canaanites, right?" Irene spoke up. "Now that's a pantheon I haven't heard anything about in a long time."
"Indeed." Lilith nodded. "Mainly thanks to the fact that, sans him, there's no pantheon to do anything worth hearing about anymore. After all their believers got sucked up by monotheism, and talk of the Canaanites all-but vanished from the world, they've been disappearing one by one. Sans Shalim, the only one I don't think anyone's confirmed the death of is Asherah… but who knows where SHE'S gone post-Great War. Hell, she might be dead as well."
"So assuming she is, Shaalim's the last of his kind?" Raylix asked, with Lilith nodding in reply.
"Yup. And he's not the only one to get negatively affected by the rise of monotheism: the Egyptian pantheon's growth has all-but permanently stalled as well."
"Maybe they shouldn't have pissed off Yahweh with the whole 'Hebrew slaves' thing." Irene remarked. "The more you look into the plagues… the more embarrassing for them it becomes."
Lilith let out a half-snort of amusement at the Platinum's words.
"Indeed." She replied. "Though at least you hear that pantheon and its gods getting talked about on occasion, for one reason or another. Which is more than can be said for the Aztecs: what's left of them are still coasting along on Quetzal's fame. I don't see that pantheon disappearing like the Canaanites anytime soon, but they're definitely not gaining any ground popularity-wise. Most likely scenario? Think the Greek and Norse Pantheons, but less relevant, and older."
Setting her glass down, Lilith returned her gaze to Katerea, who after blinking a couple of times, slowly retook her seat next to Malech. The tension in her face before was slightly less prevalent now, and rather than throwing out more accusations of lies from Lilith, she seemed to at least be considering what she had to say.
"Going back to an earlier point," Lilith continued. "When I first heard the name 'Khaos Brigade', and when I first joined, I'll wholly admit to being somewhat taken by the ideology they pedalled. But when I learned of their leadership, and the context surrounding them that I've laid out for you all now… suspicious, wouldn't you agree?"
"Very." Tamamo remarked, by way of reply. She made to lean back, but seemed to forget that from her position on the couch, she had nothing to lean back against, and almost toppled off the couch entirely. She managed to catch herself before she ate shit on Lilith's office floor, though, and reset herself with a blush.
"Exactly." Lilith nodded, as titters broke out across the office. "But in spite of said suspicions, I was ready to let things go, fall in line and simply work as an agent of the Khaos Brigade from behind the scenes, if no evidence that would prove my suspicions came to light. However…"
"Something did, didn't it?" Cinder spoke up, tilting her head slightly as she looked over at Lilith, who met her eyes and nodded.
Snapping her fingers, a magic-circle appeared on the desk in front of her, with a file popping out of it. Lilith rose to her feet, resting one hand on the file as she walked around her desk, into the centre of the room. At the sight of the file, the entire room (sans Hikari and Kurumi) seemed to lean forward a bit, anticipatory of what would come next.
"I had a trusted underling of mine, who- for personal reasons- can't be with us right now and probably won't be for a good long time," Lilith began "stalk the Khaos Brigade's leadership by way of their familiar, report their discussions and actions back to them, and by extension me."
Lilith opened the file, and focused some of her power onto the sheets within it, causing it to glow a bright silver.
"They overheard this little exchange between them a few days ago." She remarked, as she moved back to her chair behind her desk, and retook her seat. "Thought you might find it… enlightening."
She leaned back in her chair as a rich, lyrical, almost sing-song-like voice began to sound off from the sheet Lilith had just enchanted.
"…unify the humans. Given the correct encouragement, they'll be willing to fall in line. Probably even more so, considering how easily they fall to fake power nowadays."
Another voice, every word of it laced with disdain, replied.
"And cut out the others' main source of power from right under them. Not that they'll notice, considering how they've all seemingly given up trying to regain influence in the world, and are all ready to just cling to each other in a joint attempt to stay relevant."
Another voice, with its harsh, clipped syllables carrying intense authority, sounded off.
"I tried to warn Ra-"
""We know."" The first two voices cut across the third, in unison, before the second one spoke up again. "But anyway, their attempts to kiss each other's asses and make deals with one another works to our advantage. They'll know what all that fake power is worth soon enough, when faced with true power. OUR power, to shape the world as WE see fit!"
Voices 2 and 3 let out dark chuckles, with the first joining them after a second or two, though one of the laughs quickly ceased, and the third voice spoke up.
"Wait. Something's here."
The other two's laughs dropped almost immediately, and the first voice sounded off again, his tone suddenly shifting to a low, lethal whisper.
"I feel it. Surveillance magic… there!"
The sound of a powerful attack going off, so loudly and so powerfully that Cinder jumped in her position on the couch, covering her ears for a second. Malech even made to jump to his feet, shift into shift into a battle-stance, before stopping himself and returning to his seat.
The recording cut out, at which point Lilith casually waved a hand, shutting the file and dispelling it as quickly as it had been summoned.
"In case anyone's curious, or cares," she said, into the silence that followed the end of the recording as she sat back down. "My underling's familiar managed to escape with its life. One of its wings got a bit damaged, and it lost its tail, but better than losing something so valuable."
Rolling her shoulders a little, Lilith looked out across the room.
"So, I'll repeat myself: the Khaos Brigade's public mission? You'll never catch me saying I disagree with it. However, the current leadership hide their true goals behind lies and lovely-sounding rhetoric. They don't want change, they're just lashing out at the fact their time has either come, or is coming soon. Thus, I hope you can understand why I feel it's best to tear the organisation down, strip it for its useful parts, and have someone actually capable of leading the revolution they publicly purport to its proper conclusion."
"And by 'someone actually capable'", Katerea remarked, folding her arms under her chest. "I'm gonna take a wild shot in the dark and guess you're referring to... yourself."
Lilith nodded, taking a breath as she looked over at Katerea.
"Shooting in the dark IS what Devils are good at." She remarked. "Yes, you'd be right."
Raylix looked from Lilith to Katerea, taking a final gulp of his fiancée's tit-milk from the glass before setting it down near the edge of her desk. His eyes shifted from Katerea back to Lilith, and then over for a second time to Katerea as she took a breath.
"Okay." The brunette Satan-descendant spoke, shifting slightly on the couch. "Take down the Khaos Brigade, kill its leaders... I can't find a good reason to stand in your way on that front, given the evidence." she gestured to the spot on the desk where the file had been a moment ago, before turning to speak to the room at large. "But I can't be the only one here wondering, right? How can we be sure you're not doing the exact same thing? Hiding your true goals behind lies and lovely-sounding rhetoric, I think you put it?"
Seemingly resisting the urge to giggle at Katerea throwing her own words right back at her for a second, Lilith shifted herself in her chair slightly, taking a breath as she seemed to consider how to word what she wanted to say next. The entire room seemed to lean forward in anticipation: evidently, Katerea had been correct in her assumption.
She definitely had a point, at the very least, Raylix thought.
"Tell me, Katerea," Lilith began, after her pause. "If I'd come to the True Satan Faction- you, Shalba and Creuserey, the leaders of a faction of a fraction of one single species across the entire supernatural world- on the day I did, and simply told you everything I planned to do upfront: taking on a rapidly-growing world-spanning organisation like the Khaos Brigade by myself, and asking you to blindly stand behind me until the last of your numbers got blown to pieces on the altar of progress, how do you think you'd have reacted?"
Katerea blinked, slightly taken aback by Lilith's sudden question. She paused for a second, her mouth slightly open before she responded.
"You'd have been insane." She replied, slowly. "Or- I would've thought you were insane. Hell only knows how Shalba and Creuserey would have reacted."
"However they chose to respond, they'd have been right to." Lilith replied. "We'd probably have gone to war with each other, right there and then. Whoever would have come out on top, out of me versus your entire faction... it would've been incredibly bloody, as opposed to the grand total of- hmm- zero, deaths that resulted from how we ended up taking the faction over."
Katerea blinked again, looking down at her thighs as she seemed to mull over Lilith's answer. There was general silence in the room for several seconds as everyone looked like they were doing the same.
There wasn't any negative way Raylix could truly spin what Lilith had said against her. She might have left the idea of 'Lilith vs. The Entire True Satan Faction' open, but with who she had under her- Hikari, Kurumi, whoever it was that that familiar who had recorded the conversation between the three Khaos Brigade leaders belonged to... maybe himself, as well- those four, plus Lilith herself: it really didn't sound like a battle that the True Satan Faction would still be standing at the end of.
And with that being the case, the way she'd actually chosen to take over the faction, with- as she said- no lives lost at the end of that day, it certainly tracked with what she'd said during the speech that Katerea had mentioned, and even a month later, was still ringing in his mind.
"Your lives will be in our care, this I vow to you all! I look forward to celebrating the dawn of the new world with as many of you as possible, when we've all made it to the end alive!"
Because if she really didn't care about that kind of thing, she probably wouldn't have carried her takeover out in the way that she did, would she?
But still...
"And you, Raylix."
Raylix jumped slightly, as he was called out by name. Looking away from the space between his thighs (one of which was involuntarily bouncing a bit), he focused his attention on Lilith, as she turned slightly, to more face him in particular than the room at large.
"I went even further with you than I've done with everyone else in this room, except maybe Hikari and Kurumi. I took you and your fellowship in when you coincidentally turned up on my doorstep, out in the Human world. I let you stay with my daughters in the Human world, and with every day longer we spent together, I felt myself able to trust you more and more, enough to bring you not just into my inner circle, but closer to me.
"Yeah, I think anyone with a pair of eyes can tell you and him are pretty close, now." Esdeath remarked, her arms folded as her eyes flicked between Raylix and Lilith.
"Or ears, in the event Mom ends up leaving her bedroom door open." Kurumi added, sharing a knowing glance with Hikari, who shrugged.
"Oh, damn, did I?" Lilith, legitimately caught off-guard for a fraction of a second, half-whispered half-gasped, before shrugging herself. "Anyway, my point is, if my intention was to keep you at arms-length about my true intentions, while stringing you along with a promise of affection that I had no intention to follow through on, I wouldn't have let any of what's transpired between us since we reunited in France come to pass. I wouldn't have let you stay with my daughters, I wouldn't have given you Rubilacxe, I wouldn't have installed you as a co-leader of the Underworld Reformation Faction, I wouldn't have let you cum in me... so many times-"
"TMI, Mom." Hikari muttered, just out enough for everyone to hear.
"-and most of all," Lilith continued, smirking both in response to Hikari's muttered remark and in anticipation of what she was about to reveal next. "I wouldn't have said yes when you proposed."
That landed like a lightning bolt, Raylix (under his light blush) could see it in everyone else's reactions.
Irene's eyes widened slightly, Cinder seemed to cough on... nothing, Esdeath's light-blue eyebrows almost flew all the way off the top of her head, they seemed to raise so far and so quickly, Tamamo's eyes shifted from Raylix to Lilith and back again, her legs rubbing together slightly- almost unconsciously- Katerea and Malech let out whispered "Oh, damn"s, in seeming unison.
Only Hikari and Kurumi didn't seem to react, beyond another knowing look and shared smirk in the other's direction.
Before anyone else could let out any words, the sound of the knob of the office-door turning, the door itself swinging open, met everyone's ears.
"And as for everyone else..." Lilith spoke, as if anyone was wondering what this was for as everyone looked at the newest entrant to the room: a small girl, with long black hair and porcelain-pale skin. They wore an intricately-styled black and purple goth-lolita dress, frilled and laced with ribbons, and what looked like cross-shaped tape over where their breasts would be, if they had any.
Their expression as they walked in was unreadable. Their aura calm- yet at the same time impossibly deep, as if the void itself stared out from behind her eyes. They didn't meet anyone's eyes in particular as they moved through the room, and simply stood in front of Lilith's desk once they got close enough.
Lilith opened her mouth, with clear intent to introduce the new person, but Katerea- again- spoke up before the Lillim Queen could get any words out.
"Lilith, mind telling me what the actual fu-"
Malech's eyes widened as he seemed to realise exactly who had just walked in. Kurumi and Hikari simply shared another look, with Kurumi raising her eyebrows slightly.
Tamamo straightened up, from her position on the couch-arm she was perched on. If she had hackles, she'd surely have raised them by now. Irene blinked a couple of eyes, her eyes wide as they flicked from the black-haired girl to Lilith and back again.
"Uh... who is that, exactly?" Cinder asked, straightening up as well. Esdeath looked like she was a couple of seconds from asking the exact same question.
Recalling something else that Lilith had said about the Khaos Brigade, and their strength... Raylix's eyes widened alongside Irene's, as he put it together a fraction of a second before Lilith opened her mouth to answer.
"This..." she spoke, her voice the same calm tone as she'd been using all meeting so far, getting to her feet. "is Ophis. The Infinite Dragon God, the Strongest Existence, the Ouroboros Dragon, all those names and more... that's them. They're with me."
"Oh, damn." Raylix muttered, barely loud enough to hear, in a seeming mirror to Katerea and Malech's reactions a moment ago to Lilith's declaration that she and Raylix were engaged.
"You could call them my trump card." Lilith continued, gesturing to Ophis. "And in case anyone's wondering, when I said the Khaos Brigade had secured their backing… I meant me. Thought I'd throw that out there, going forward."
Raylix's eyes flicked over to Katerea, who rather than fire back with any kind of biting remark, simply shrugged and let out a quiet sigh. At this point, he figured, she'd believe anything that came out of Lilith's mouth. And to be honest, it wouldn't be a lie to say he wasn't feeling the same way.
"We agreed to this collaboration, myself and Ophis, on one major condition." She leaned against the table, looking around the room to everyone sat or stood within it, before finishing on Ophis.
Raylix would have let out a chuckle at the INCREDIBLY visible height difference between the two of them, had the situation not been so serious.
"That the group that will be forged from the ashes of the Khaos Brigade, starting with you- the URF," Lilith continued. "Assist Ophis in their goal: reclaiming their home, the Dimensional Gap."
"The dimension between dimensions…" Malech mused, leaning forward slightly from his position on the couch. "That's your home, Ophis?"
Ophis turned away from Lilith for a second, to face the Devil that had just addressed them.
"Yes." They replied, their voice practically monotone to match their expression. "It is… where I formed."
Malech let out a quiet "hm", and leant back.
"The Dimensional Gap has, since Ophis left sometime ago," Lilith spoke, her voice similarly quiet. "been occupied by a different being, one that you might not have heard of: the Red Dragon God Emperor, the Dragon of Dreams, the True Dragon, whatever you might want to call them… Great Red."
"And Ophis wants them out…" Raylix remarked, looking over at Ophis himself. "…why, exactly?"
He felt a slight chill as, just like they'd done towards Malech a moment or so ago, Ophis turned to face him.
"The Dimensional Gap..." They replied, in the same monotone as they'd talked to Malech in. "is mine. My dimension. My silence. My home. Loud Red, it ruins it with their noise. I… cannot exist in the same realm as it."
Hard to argue with that, Raylix thought as he leant back in his chair again, watching Ophis as they turned away from him, towards the Succubus that had brought them in (if Ophis hadn't just shown up of their own accord).
"Lilith."
It was slight, barely noticeable to the average man, woman or thing, but everyone in the room noticed Lilith tensing up a tad as it was her turn to get addressed by Ophis.
"You are not the first to promise me… assistance in removing Loud Red from my home." They spoke, their black eyes boring up into Lilith's red. "All the others, they just needlessly buzzed in my ears. How can I be sure that you… are not the same as all of them?"
It was, this time, even less noticeable. Judging by everyone else's lack of micro-reaction to the flicker of unease that showed up on Lilith's face, Raylix had a sneaking suspicion he was the only one that had clocked it.
With what he'd heard about Ophis, being much, MUCH stronger than even the two Heavenly Dragons- COMBINED- straight-up the strongest known being to exist in the world, he'd probably be shitting himself if he got put on the spot by such a being, in the manner that Lilith seemed to have.
The unease that had flickered onto Lilith's face disappeared as quickly as it came, replaced by a faint smile as she straightened up.
"Because, Ophis, I can do one better than all the others." She replied. "I can help show you."
She then looked up, past Ophis, straight towards Hikari, softly nodding in her direction. The silverette, understanding the unspoken order, immediately stepped forward, the sound of which prompted Ophis to turn around, their head tilting in slight interest.
"Nice to meet you in the flesh, Ophis." Hikari spoke, slowly bending down once she got close enough to the dark-haired Dragon. "You know who I am, don't you? Or rather, you know who else is here because of me?"
Ophis blinked, and the silence that they'd talked up so much stretched out across Lilith's office for a few seconds as they took in Hikari's question, very quickly found their answer as their eyes narrowed, ever so slightly.
"Albion."
"Yup." Hikari nodded. "I'm the host of Divine Dividing. Whatever you're thinking about that, considering the fact that the woman who killed him is also right here in this room, trust me, we've all thought it at least a few times."
Raylix swore he could hear a deep "Hmph." sounding from around where Hikari was, though he didn't see anyone speaking.
"Part of the answer you're looking for," Hikari continued, swallowing. "it lies within… my memories. I want you to… to look inside them. You can do that, right?"
Raylix looked past Hikari and Ophis in the middle of the room, as he noticed movement from behind them. Kurumi had taken… not even a half-step, something more akin to a quarter-step towards Hikari and Ophis, an expression of deep concern etched on her face in stark contrast to the easy-going, sometimes downright flirty, looks that usually crossed her face. But before she could get closer, she'd met Lilith's eyes, clocked the expression that had formed on the First Succubus' face. It was a look that Raylix was all too familiar with, when he'd made to start attempting to quell the uproar that had erupted around Hebeth when Katerea had declared Shalba and Creuserey's reign over the then-True Satan Faction.
And just like him, when he'd been fixed with that look from her mother, Kurumi paused for a second, before returning to her original position and not moving any further. But that didn't erase the clear look of concern for her sister, that remained etched on her face as she looked down at Hikari and Ophis. The latter of whom, after another second, slowly reached up with one of their hands, towards Hikari's forehead.
Hikari reached out, gently took the hand that had reached out towards her, guided it towards her temple and laid it there, closing her eyes and taking a slow breath.
Silence and stillness reigned over the office once again, all eyes on Ophis. All eyes EXCEPT Raylix's and Kurumi's, it seemed, as they only had eyes for the silverette whose mind Ophis was looking around in.
Hikari's face was taut, her brows pinched, lips drawn into a thin line. Her eyes squeezed shut, her breath and body trembling, her hands balled into tight fists and buried in the carpet of Lilith's office. It could not have been clearer that whatever she was reliving was far from pleasant.
But she didn't pull away.
For three agonizingly-long, stretched out minutes, Hikari and Ophis remained in their positions. After one, Hikari's breaths had become audible, as the stress of reliving whatever she'd gone through began to get to her. After two, Raylix spotted tears making their way out from within the White Dragon Empress' eyes, and beginning to stream down her face.
And after three, judging by how Ophis pulled their hand away and Hikari immediately jumped backwards, her eyes flying open, tears fully flowing down her face at this point and her breaths coming out in wheezes, it was all over. Ophis had seen all they needed to.
Kurumi immediately dived for her sister, helping her to her feet and holding her in a tight embrace as she practically pulled her towards the door to her office. She looked over to Lilith, her eyes pleading.
Whatever answer she seemed to be looking for from her mother, though, didn't come. As much as Kurumi looked like she'd have preferred to do otherwise, the two of them came to a stop just by the door, near to their original positions when this meeting had started.
Ophis, by contrast, hadn't moved since they stopped looking at Hikari's memories. Until they slowly turned, their expression unreadable, to look over at Lilith, before back at Hikari.
"Why…" they asked, their eyes narrowing a slight bit more as they returned their gaze to Lilith. "did those Devils need… to do those things?"
Lilith almost looked surprised by the question. Like she hadn't actually expected Ophis to react in the way that they had to what they'd seen, if at all. Clearly then, Raylix thought, Hikari had to have been through some SHIT if it had gotten Ophis reacting like they had.
"They didn't."
Ophis turned back, again, to face the woman who had spoken. Hikari, wiping her eyes on her sleeve as she took half a step away from Kurumi, let out a breath as she faced Ophis again.
"They didn't." she repeated. "Fath- Razevan, did it because he couldn't take his own daughter being potentially stronger than him. And Rizevim… I don't know…"
Kurumi moved again, immediately wrapping her arms around Hikari in a tight embrace again, offering up the sleeve of her t-shirt for Hikari to wipe her eyes on again.
"I'm good, I… I'm fine." Hikari whispered to Kurumi, as she pulled away from her again, wiping her face on her own shirt. She took another breath, this one a slow shudder as she either didn't hear or didn't acknowledge Katerea's outcry of "Rizevim Livan Lucifer?! But… he's dead!", instead fully focusing on Ophis.
"You want to get rid of Great Red, kick them out of the Dimensional Gap, because you feel they've ruined your home… have I got that right?"
Ophis remained still, silent for a couple of seconds as they considered Hikari's statement and question, before slowly nodding.
"Right…" Hikari replied, nodding in return. "I get how you feel. I was…" she closed her eyes, taking another slow breath, this one more even and less shuddering than the first one. "I had my home ruined for me, too. By the men in my memories. Between when I was born, to when Lilith first took me in, I could never picture anywhere as my home, not as it was meant to be. Where I first lived, before I went on the run, all I can remember when I think about is… is pain."
She took another breath, as Ophis seemed to take in what Hikari was saying, her eyes widening slightly.
"And men like them, the ones from my past," Hikari continued. "They did the same to Mom, too. Used her for their own ends, to expand, to control, to ruin… all in the name of ideologies that, when you tell them a certain way, obviously sound a lot better than… the reality."
She rubbed at the temple where Ophis had laid their hand earlier, to look at her memories. She looked past Ophis for a fraction of a second, up at Lilith, who gave her a reassuring nod. Taking a breath, she spoke again.
"People like them, if they get their way… they could reach the Dimensional Gap, too." She asked. "Make it worse than Great Red's already made it. Even if we help you reclaim it."
The effect those two sentences had on Ophis was immediate. As soon as the last syllable left Hikari's throat, the Ouroboros Dragon's aura flared out from within her. Everyone felt it washing over them, pressing down on them with the suddenness and weight of being run over by a freight train. Raylix saw Lilith's eyes widening as she, seemingly on instinct, gripped the arms of her chair, her knuckles whitening as he heard the wood creaking beneath her fingers.
He felt himself gritting his teeth, the wind somewhat knocked out of him from the sheer force that Ophis' aura had crashed into him. He noticed Katerea and Malech thrown back in their positions on the couch, Kurumi physically thrown back against the door to the office, Esdeath and Tamamo were both thrown from their positions on the arms of the couch that Irene and Cinder were fully sat on. Esdeath collapsed on the ground but rose to her feet within a couple of seconds, looking very much ready for a fight. Tamamo looked… less ready, at least not as quickly as Esdeath did, but like before, if she had hackles, they would very much have been up.
Irene visibly sweatdropped from the sheer force of the 'Infinite' Dragon God's aura, but remained where she was, while Cinder- caught the least prepared out of everyone- was the only one to buckle entirely. She collapsed where she sat, though before her head could smack against the wall behind her and hurt her, Esdeath was up to shield the back of it with her hand.
Somewhat surprisingly, the least affected out of everyone in the office was Hikari, who only looked slightly tense as the white and blue wings of Divine Dividing sprung out from her back.
"Ophis, Ophis!" the deep, resonant voice of the White Dragon Emperor called out, with the blue energy-feathers glowing as he spoke. "My host only speaks of what COULD be, if those she speaks of have their way. Not what is guaranteed TO be. There's no need to get angry… just hear Lilith out, she isn't finished."
Ophis blinked. The pressure in the room seemed to pause, not getting heavier or lighter.
A couple of seconds passed, though they felt a good bit longer to all concerned. Less seconds, more moments or even minutes.
The pressure then dissipated, and the room took a collective sigh of relief. Ophis blinked, again, before turning to face Lilith, who had picked up her glass to take another sip. The widow of Lucifer swallowed, cleared her throat, visibly relaxed herself before speaking again.
"Thanks, Albion."
"Don't talk to me, bitch."
And without another word, Hikari's Sacred Gear disappeared from sight, as quickly as it had arrived. Not that Irene seemed to take any notice of that, as she rested a couple of fingers on Cinder's forehead, whispered a spell under her breath, removed the fingers. After a couple of seconds, Cinder slowly opened her eyes, shifting forward as she moved her head out of Esdeath's hand, while the bluenette retook her place on the arm of the couch.
"Damn…" she murmured. "What the hell happened?"
"We all got a taste of what happens when Ophis gets irritated." Malech remarked. "And Albion told Lilith to go fu-"
"Yeah, yeah." Lilith raised a hand to shut Malech up, rolling her shoulders slightly as she looked down at Ophis, who themselves had taken a couple of steps towards her. "Ophis?"
"Your memories." Ophis replied, bluntly, as they rose a hand. "I wish to see them. To confirm if what Albion said… if it was true."
Lilith blinked, set her glass down, letting out a quiet sigh.
"Of course." She replied, getting up from her desk and moving around it, bending down once she got close enough to Ophis so they were on a level, just as Hikari had done.
Without even needing to be invited, Ophis reached out again, settled their hand on Lilith's temple. Like when Hikari had had her memories looked into by the Ouroboros, the room went silent as the strongest being in the world looked into the mind of one of the most dangerous.
Unlike Hikari, however, over the few minutes that Ophis looked into Lilith's mind, she didn't flinch. She didn't look, for even a second, like she was losing her composure. Face calm, lips lightly open, eyes VERY much open, her breath and body even, one hand gently resting on Ophis' shoulder and the other pressed onto the ground, more for balance than any kind of attempt at stress-relief. Raylix knew, damn well, that out of everyone in the room (to his knowledge, at least), Lilith's life prior to this moment could only be really rivalled by Tamamo in terms of how awful it had been, and even then that was a MASSIVE stretch.
So, it was a wonder that she was so in control as she seemed to relive it, under Ophis' hand.
That didn't mean, after the few minutes had passed and Ophis withdrew their hand, that Lilith was completely unaffected, though. As she rose to her feet, while Ophis stood back, she immediately returned to her desk, filled up her mostly-empty glass with dark wine and took a couple of gulps, the fingers of her free hand trembling ever-so-slightly along with her breath.
"You good?" Raylix asked, looking over at his fiancée as she lowered her glass. Lilith nodded, sitting back down in her chair as she looked over at Ophis, took another sip of wine as they watched her.
They didn't have any kind of reaction, visible or verbal, to Lilith's memories, at least not as quickly as they'd done when they'd looked through Hikari's. Not for just over a half-minute, before they blinked again, took a half-step closer to Lilith's desk.
"Your plan." They spoke, their voice the same general monotone but with the slightest- ever-so-slightest- tone of certainty behind it. As if they'd made up their mind, that they- as well as everyone else- were with Lilith now. "What is it?"
Raylix swallowed, his throat slightly dry in the aftermath of Ophis' little aura-flare. Little by THEIR standards, at least, if what he'd heard about their power-level was true.
"Yeah." He spoke. "What comes next, when we've replaced the Khaos Brigade? I think we'd all like to hear that, now."
Lilith swallowed her mouthful of wine, set her glass back down. She leaned back in her seat, taking a couple of slow breaths as she looked around the room- to Raylix, to Irene and Cinder, to Esdeath and Tamamo, to Katerea and Malech, to Hikari and Kurumi, and finally back to Ophis.
The entire room seemed to be leaning forward, in anticipation of her answer. And, well, it was time to give it.