Enter Evil.
Lauthal bobbed her right foot gently over the edge of the long plush red couch she was lying across and held a bunch of grapes above her mouth to bite one off. She was decked out in a long silky blue gown that matched the sky blue of her glittering eyes. Upon her head, golden ringlets fell perfectly around the sparkling silver tiara she wore, that one could see their own reflection in when looking at its surface. A deep red diamond-shaped stone hung down from the tiara over Lauthal's forehead. Besides this, a vast selection of silver bracelets wound their way up her wrists and a variety of silver rings decorated her fingers. There were small golden bells hanging from the corners of her dress that tinkled musically when she moved.
At the moment she sat there contentedly, doing little more than appreciating her own beauty and prominence. She was Lauthal, Empress, and no menial task was fit for her hands. Her beautiful silky smooth amazing, perfect, wonderful, brilliant, super, faultless, breathtaking hands. Lauthal studied them in awe for a few more moments, before returning to her task of eating grapes.
At that moment, the large, arched double doors at the end of Lauthal's room burst open and a small array of figures began to march forward across the blood red carpets towards her. There were about six of them, one in the lead with the other five following in a sort of pentagon formation.
Their journey towards her forced them past Lauthal's collection of strange artifacts ranging from a giant stuffed brown bear, crystals balls and her personal favourite, an oversized guillotine. But none of these items fazed the group heading towards her as much as the sudden appearance of a small gray fluffy muff of hair.
The small dog, Pepita, gave the group a high-pitched agitated bark and they all immediately stopped in their tracks. The little dog only got more aggravated and began to bark so violently and rapidly that its entire body shook in little bounces across the floor.
The pained look that fell across the leader of the newcomers entering Lauthal's room amused her so that she let out a light glittery laugh that filtered across the room and seemed to ring through the walls and columns supporting it.
"Pepita," she called the tiny dog, "they re not worth your time." The dog gave the group a disdainful look before turning and leaping up beside its mistress. Lauthal stroked a hand through its long silky hair and dropped the bunch of grapes into a nearby fruit bowl sitting upon a short oriental table next to her couch.
"Well, Raelis" she addressed the leader of the group, a tall, pale, weedy man with unkempt blonde hair hanging craggily around his face. There were dark rings under his eyes and a horrible evil steely depth within them.
All in all, his disturbing appearance only made her look like even more like a goddess. Well, who's to say she could be a goddess. Lauthal smiled pleasantly and would have primped her feathers had she had any.
Behind him were a selection of Lauthal's advisors, mostly weak old gray men with long beards whose main purpose was to agree with her, and two of her soldiers decked out in silver plate mail.
"You've returned," she continued to the man in front of her, "I assume you must have good news." He would not have returned without it. It would have only given her an excuse to use that favourite contraption of hers, the thrill of heads rolling. Her nostrils flared in anticipation.
"Indeed," the man replied, taking a sweeping bow as a gesture of his insignificance beside her, "I have the information you desire, Mistress I know where you can find the Dragon's breath." Raelis sounded impressed with himself too impressed. Lauthal decided she would have to take him down a notch or two.
"Know where it is!" she told her underling coldly, sitting up, "I'd expected you would have brought it to me by now, what with all the time it took you." However, Lauthal could barely contain her excitement, her whole body quivered deliriously, her hand resting on the small dog beside her with its head hanging boredly over the edge of the couch. Raelis did not reply, but simply gazed back at his Mistress with soulless eyes.
"Well?" Lauthal finally barked, breaking the silence, "where is it!?" Lauthal glared out angrily, and for a moment Raelis hesitated.
"Mistress," he finally replied, slowly, "the Dragon's breath can only be taken, in physical form, from the mouth of a dragon From the mouth of one dragon, the oldest known alive." Lauthal brightened slightly.
"Perfect," she said enthusiastically, "I just felt like killing something. Let's go." She looked out expectantly and Pepita raised her head in vague interest, but as soon as she had spoken, the advisors standing behind Raelis had leapt into a dialogue of concerned whispers between themselves.
"Uh, Mistress," Raelis interrupted, "this dragon lives in the DarkVeil Forest " He drifted off mid-sentence as Lauthal s features contorted demonically.
"The DarkVeil...," she repeated, muttering. They all knew what that meant, and likely it shook every man in the room with fright, except, perhaps, Raelis himself. And Lauthal. Of course, her very innards were quaking like jelly, but she was not about to let these fools know that and besides, what did she have to fear? She had armies of soldiers to sacrifice themselves for her life.
No forest was going to scare her into submission, filled with the souls of the dead or not. After all, it was just trees!
"Did you have a point?" she demanded frostily of her inferior, doing her best to maintain her collected fae. Lauthal may not have known it, but Raelis could see right through her as though she were clear as glass. He knew enough of the verbal and physical cues around the Empress to judge what she really meant, he could read between the lines, not like the idiots standing behind him as a bunch of clucking chickens. The forest was dangerous, a suicide mission he was certain, but pointing that out to the Empress would only anger her, as it would endanger the impression she liked to believe people held of her strong, unfearing and unrelenting, but also dangerously beautiful.
"The fae," he pointed out instead, "may not appreciate our intrusion onto their land." That was a more reasonable argument. The Empress would never accept, even if she did believe that the DarkVeil forest was inhabited by the souls of the dead, that they would be something to fear. But the fae yes the fae were a concern, for they were certainly powerful. However, it was not their threat to the Lauthal's empire that he was pointing out, but that the fae were linked to something Lauthal needed more than her empire. If the fae chose to withdraw their, so far, unbiased support, Lauthal would no longer receive the powdered fae dust that sustained her.
This suggestion caused Lauthal to appear a little more contemplative than she had a moment earlier with her brash decision-making.
Lauthal tossed about the possibilities for a moment. On the one hand, if she lost the ability to trade with the fae for fae dust, she was not likely to live long. On the other hand, if she gained access to the Dragon's breath if she held that power, well, she wouldn't need their cooperation anyway. She could take whatever she wanted, no one would be able to stop her. She would, essentially, be a goddess. The thought inspired wicked, demonic smiles and a bright spark of greed in her eyes. A hazy delighted expression lit her face.
"Maybe I can hit two dwarves with one intelligent thought," she mused, "You, there," Lauthal extended a long finger with a perfectly manicured nail and pointed to one of her advisors standing behind Raelis. The advisor looked up with wide, almost frightened eyes and seemed to mouth, "Me!?"
"Yes you," Lauthal barked, "what s you name? Maja Mojo "
"Hun," the advisor murmured meekly as he shuffled forward slightly.
"Whatever," Lauthal replied in a bored tone, "tell me, how is that pathetic tavern of my sister's doing?" Hun, the advisor, hesitated in fright, for he had the choice now between lying to Lauthal and being punished for it, or informing her exactly how the Devil's Grin Tavern was the most popular establishment in all her realm and suffering from an extreme case of dismember the messenger. He felt his knees shaking at the thought.
"Whatever," Lauthal repeated before the advisor could get a chance to reply, saving his skin, "it doesn't matter I have an idea. Brilliant, of course," she dug her fingers into the soft covering of the couch and massaged it violently, as she often did when thinking about her sister, and managed a wicked smile, "Maja whatever-your-name-is, contact my spies and troublemakers on my sister. We're going to make sure the fae believe she's the one interested in trespassing on their land." With any luck, the fae would stop trading fae dust with Jereez instead and Jez would die a long, slow, painful, crippling, tormented death, preferably from some foreign disease that ate away at one's skin first.
It was a pleasant thought.
