She sees the light ahead of them before any of her crew, a gathering near the ceiling of the Neath and then an arc downwards into the black waters of the zee. She throws her arm before her eyes, and is still left blinking spots out of her gaze.
"What was that?" a crewmember calls out in alarm.
"I don't know," she replies, "but we're checking it out."
There's murmurs, but her crew do as commanded.
- And the girl takes it.
She begins to glow ever brighter, becoming almost more substantial.
Lillian lets go after a few minutes. "I can't take you all the way," she says. "But there's a path, now." She seems tired, almost diminished, her glow pulled around herself. Still, she's grinning.
"Thank you thank you thank you!" The girl hugs Lillian about the waist, lets go, spins about, then hugs Kim.
Kim can’t help but smile, the joy infectious. She hugs the little glowing girl back, making a mental note to ask Lillian what just happened.
The girl lets go, looks at the devil, says, "You don't get a hug," then keeps spinning.
Lillian snorts.
"I think we're good to keep going," she says as the girl spins back into her.
"Souls can do it on their own, but it's - slow. Many lifetimes, and... Most are destroyed before they can shift their position. I - sparked her? Cleared the path? It's a very clear mental action for me, but... I don't know how to describe the mechanics. Saying that I took some of my own light, or my own bigness, and gifted it to her is - close to accurate."
"She'll need to hide for a while - with us, hopefully. I said my sister has claimed her, but... The High Wilderness might not be safe until things calm down. And she's still more a human soul than anything else. Gradually, she'll grow, in grace and beauty and power."
"That works for me!" She holds the girl's hand while the devil opens the door, gesturing for them to follow him.
They're led down into the further depths, where no souls go and the only ones around are devils. Then a door, and the devil bows and gestures towards it. "I do believe the one you seek is through here," he says.
Lillian hesitates, glancing at Kim.
Deep breath, and she knocks.
The door opens, seemingly of its own accord.
There's a devil sitting in there, what is apparently an office, handsome, sandy blond, face startlingly like Lillian's chosen form -
He looks up from his book and quirks an eyebrow.
Lillian freezes, mouth opening soundlessly.
"Lillian?" She squeezes her hand comfortingly, but then sees the devil properly, and her mouth gapes open too.
Lillian checks because she wouldn't put shapeshifting past the devils -
He feels like the fragment of knowing her sister relayed.
"I didn't think I had anyone looking for me, today," the devil says, voice amused and friendly and at least doing a good imitation of emotional depth.
"Ah - I'm. Do you remember the High Wilderness, the Judgement," and the concept of supremacy, high royalty worshiped, a benevolent goddess ruling over the little people at her feet, "you met her."
He looks at her, searching, eyes flaring with an odd light. "There's something of her about you."
Lillian pauses, and - "I'm her daughter. Youngest. My sister said - said a devil was my father."
"Ah," is his only reply, apparently taken aback.
"You're not much like her," he says. "She wouldn't have taken a human shape, let alone come all this way."
"I'm my own person," Lillian agrees. "There were some things we needed to know, though..."
"Improving the quality of souls is one of our jobs," the devil says. "Though we hardly manage to reach every single one."
Lillian seems to still be mulling over her own questions.
“So you take people’s souls...to ascend them?”
The Protecterate would lose their minds to know this.
"They don't," Lillian says before the devil can reply. "They do it so the souls are more valuable to the Judgement consuming them."
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