An eventful cycle of day and night, and the Whisperers had finally gotten a moment to rest. Their bodies invisible even to themselves, they gathered in each other's company and played invisible cards outside the queen's door. Throwing the metal cards with sharp edges all around, they judged them by weight, strength and sound..
"Three aces, twice in a row? Zoro, at least try to hide your cheating better!" Zosa complained to her brother, her eyes squinting in his supposed direction.
"What cheating?! You guys just suck and have no luck," he hurled right back, a devious smile crescent on his sleazy contour.
Throwing his cards at the pile stacked on the floor, Formonde–the rugged vampire scoffed and looked in Zoro's direction.
"You're right about the no luck part, otherwise I don't know how you explain being eternally stuck with an ass." The moment his complaint was over, the hissing cries of the queen bled into their ears. Standing upright off the wall, they quickly sensed each other's presence and turned to the door. "Is she gonna be alright?"
"I hope so…" Whimpered the puppet necromancer, Luna.
Her eyes focused on the door, they quivered with great angst. She loved the queen quite a bit as she was much nicer compared to those before her. But ever since William was imprisoned, things haven't been the same, and as an eternal kid herself, she couldn't help but wanna cry along with her.
"Everything will be alright," placing a hand on top of the little girl's head, Ladies–the Alce-timemancer, began running his fingers through her hair. "Why don't you come with me? We'll take a stroll, and I'm sure when we're back, the queen will be as dandy as ever."
Grabbing her hand, he began leading her away. Sensing Luna waddling away with her ceramic doll, the remaining Whisperers decided to get a bit more serious about the matter.
"Her son's proving worse and worse for her mental state." Breaking the silence, Zosa drew everyone's attention to her. "I still suggest what I suggested to the queen."
"You want to get rid of him?" Formonde inquired, not entirely against the idea but not for it either. A little push was all that was needed, and had Zoro shared the same perspective as his sister, perhaps William's death would've arrived much earlier.
"Oey~ Oey~ If you think her mental state is bad now, how worse will it be once she loses her only son?" Zoro's reasoning against her idea was sound, sound enough to convince Formonde but not Zosa.
Squinting, she glared in her brother's direction. She truly wished to wrestle with him right then and there, but that was exactly why the vampire was there. Formonde, the second strongest of their group and a rank higher than the queen himself; his presence as fleeting as a ghost for most people, masked him as a menace living under the shadows.
"As fun as an empty sack of balls, that's what you two are." Hurling her unusual insult as always, Zosa folded her hands and leaned against the wall. Sensing Zoro reaching for the card on the floor, however, she ruffled them with her feet in scorn. And while she expected Zoro to get agitated and assault her, what she was met with was somehow worse.
"Hey! How about you grow an ass instead of being one, you flat fuck!"
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?!"
Finally, the two were ready to be at each other's throat, but grabbing both of them by their shoulders, Formonde shoved them against the wall. Groaning to his vice grip, the siblings found themselves choking on their words. There was much the two wanted to complain about. It wasn't my fault! He or she started it! But indifferent to them both, the vampire couldn't have cared less about who was at fault.
"As far as I remember, the king wants someone to relay the result of his meeting with the reptilian to General Kayla." Squeezing Zosa's arm more than he did Zoro's, Formonde assigned the task to her without speaking another word. As the elf's presence disappeared, the vampire let go of her brother as well. "Good for nothing children."
"Ehh…ahaha–" Laughing an awkward laugh, Zoro began collecting his cards again and even hurled a joke to distract himself from what happened seconds ago. "She's not all bad. I'm sure that if you laid her flat on a surface, you could probably check the level of the floor."
"Again?" Scoffing at his obscene joke, the vampire took a step back and leaned against the wall. "Just shut up, why won't you? The queen's wailings are enough trouble as is. We have so much important stuff to worry about, like the conquest and what happens when the last group of islands is ours, but here we are, twiddling thumbs and wasting time on a man that doesn't deserve a single more second."
Done collecting his card, Zoro lifted from the ground with his eyebrows raised to Formonde's thoughts. He figured the vampire was on his side about William's punishment, but now that assumption felt wrong.
"You want him dead? Then why didn't you agree with her when she asked?" Asked Zoro.
After a moment of quiet, the vampire looked in his direction and responded with a question of his own.
"If your sister had tried to kill the king, you would've killed her on the spot, right?" Caught off guard by the question, Zoro didn't know what to say. The thought wouldn't even register in his mind, and only a jumble of random words blurted out of his lips in the end.
"I... What, but...she won't. What are you talking about?" It was as hard for him to imagine his sister doing something so idiotic as it was for him to not make obscene jokes about her cardboard figure.
With a sigh, Formonde looked away. He knew the brother was young of mind–forever. Nothing could help him grow, just as nothing would ease the pain of being an abstaining vampire.
'All we can hope for now is for the king to do the right thing and move us closer to our ultimate goal.' Turning his head to the queen's door, Formonde was counting as much on Wolf as he was on Astoria. There was still much that she had to do, and part of that was keeping the true reason behind adopting the king a secret a while longer.