Chaos.

That was the most basic description of what Vaile was seeing in the Desert/Sand Elf encampment. The numerous constructs that had long since been buried by the flow of time and the movement of the sands were rising up from their ‘graves’ one by one. As they exhumed themselves from the silt and dust, they locked on to their targets and almost immediately set to work smashing, crushing, cleaving, squishing, cutting, stabbing and mutilating their opponents in all manner of other ways.

The servants of Melark the Great/Cruel were still recovering from the mental impact that the destruction of the unknown object had caused, and they were in no real position to deal with the rapidly growing army of stone and metal creatures that seemed to endlessly unbury themselves, one after the other, before then deciding to make war upon them. At the very least, Vaile had not actively joined the fray, and simply watched the carnage that unfolded before him. On his minimap, the red dots vanished one by one, each overcome by at least one green dot before said entity moved on to attack another foe.

Vaile was awestruck by the brutality that was on display here. The constructs were not just attacking the men, but also the women and the children too. Vaile could see now that the darkness that the nameless sorcerer had infused within Zahra had risen to the top and was now puppeteering the mostly stone pseudo-golems like it was playing a real-time strategy game. He almost wanted to get involved and end the fighting, but some part of him held him back even as he saw a pregnant Sand Elf woman get skewered through her back and out through her stomach by the tail of a half-school-bus-sized black scorpion, made almost entirely of some kind of magically-enhanced obsidian-like material, before being thrown into the air and then swatted to the ground like a fly by an even larger humanoid construct.

Just as Vaile decided that he could leave the pseudo-golems to do their thing, they began to collapse to the ground. Vaile could feel that something was not right, and so he stepped up onto one of the now motionless stony beings and used the full extent of his powers as a Player to jump high into the air. This jump did fracture a bit of the large dog-like stone puppet, but that was a small price to pay for him getting a better view.

As he reached the apex of his short flight, Vaile’s eyes saw the faint outline of several more of the odd objects a fair bit away. He also saw that they were being moved closer to the camp that he had just jumped from, and the pieces in his mind all came together. As he began to fall, he activated a bound ability in one of his shoes, which kept him in the air just around 30 seconds more before he would be forced to slowly drift back to the surface. There was no time like the present for him to act, and he rifled through his inventory for a while before withdrawing a couple lumps of unrefined iron ore. He still had around five seconds left to hover by now, and that was all he needed.

Lobbing those roughly cantaloupe-sized lumps of iron ore like a major-league baseball pitcher, Vaile let fly six individual clumps of ore at speeds just low enough to avoid the material heating up far too much to be of much use but just fast enough to (hopefully) smash the strange objects that the Desert Elves were moving. All but two of the lumps struck true, with one missing its target by around half a meter and the other missing its intended target but at least doing some good; smashing some random Sand Elf to a bloody mess on impact before bouncing off the sand and removing another fool’s leg just above the knee. Vaile soon began to float gently towards the ruined encampment beneath him, but this just gave him slightly more time to throw a few more fastballs.

After making another four throws, this time hitting his target on the first and fourth throw respectively, Vaile decided to be even more of a dick to the enemy of his ally by throwing a few more… dangerous things at the Desert Elves. He still had quite the number of bottles filled with all manner of concoctions in his expansive inventory, all gathered at some point or another during his play-time but never used due to either him not finding a good place/time to use them or getting better stuff and retiring the older/weaker mixture before it could be used. However, now he was not facing high-level Players, but instead a bunch of level 30-40 mooks.

By the almighty power of the Inverse Ninja Law, he had more than enough stuff to take the very bad day that these people were having and make it far, far worse. However, Vaile failed to notice during this time that a group of Sand Elves riding monsters that they had tamed were approaching from behind a rather large dune. By the time he had finally touched down on terra firma, however, he was painfully aware of the incoming threat.

This was due not to him being actually in danger, but due to the shouts and whoops from the riders of the monstrous mounts as they tried to force their beasts to charge him. Unfortunately for the Sand/Desert Elves, that charge they were planning was never going to happen, as Vaile’s stupidly effective Reversed Attractiveness debuff combined with his stupidly good Tamer focused build made the Rhynalonts outright refuse to even attempt to harm him.

Eventually, the Sand Elf Cavalry decided that dismounting was the best option available to them, and that ended up not going so well for them either. Vaile just gave a slight command as the last of the Desert Elves feet touched the ground, and suddenly their former mounts were now all lifting up their legs and relieving their bladders all over their owners. Vaile nearly wet himself laughing, but he figured that he had better things to do than stick around. Besides, his intention was not to kill everyone, although he certainly could do so. No, he was here just to destroy a few of those twisted objects and then retreat while letting Zahra’s unrestricted power overwhelm the exposed enemies of herself and her nation.

Vaile hoofed it back towards the ruined village, letting his control over the Rhynalonts slip and allowing the rapidly increasing number of constructs do their thing. He arrived back to safety just as the sun was coming up, and rather than tell anyone he was back he decided to simply hit the hay in the husk of one of the burned-out houses. He was sure that Zahra knew now that he was easily able to deal with the things she couldn’t, and with that bit of leverage safely inside his head, he shut his eyes and went to sleep, all while completely unaware that Zahra had left this place and arrived at her new destination (looking to fight alongside Vaile himself, no less) just a few moments after he left the camp that had housed the first unknown object that he had destroyed.

…

As Vaile caught some much-needed Zs, Melark had retreated from the destruction that the risen Pharaoh was wreaking, cursing himself and his own weakness for being unable to stop from coming to pass the prophetic visions his new god had shown him of what could potentially be. His skin was exposed to the elements and now burned with the fury of what was just under a third-degree sunburn, caused by the magical bolt of solar flame that had incinerated more than a third of his trusted cavalry and left him nearly blind for a few moments.

There was now a breach in the containment field, and he dreaded the lecture that his deity would have for him. However, even a disaster such as this could be undone if he put his mind to it. He needed to destroy these people, for even the destruction of even a single member of the ‘Dark Alliance of Monsters and Men’ would have drastic ramifications further down the line. The flapping of but an individual Dustfly’s wings could cause a hurricane after enough time had passed, and he just needed to make the wings flap in just the right place and in just the right way. If he could do that, the end of everything could be averted and the masters of the true god could be preserved.