Vaile blinked once, then twice, then a third time as he stared out the hole that connected the cave that he had dug to the outside world. He looked down from where the rock had been, poking his head out of the hole and then looking from side to side, then down, all before immediately regretting the choice to look towards where once was a floor.

“Hahaha!” laughed a man who was literally standing in the air not even a few feet from Vaile’s face, right where once was a narrow path that snaked along the edge of a mountain range. “A pity, really. This world really is far too fragile, don’t you agree Lord?”

Vaile’s grip on the sides of the hole tightened as he made the regrettable choice to peek out a little further and look to the sides with a bit more range. The generic dirt, stone, and other things on the mountain range, including a decent portion of the mountains themselves, looked like they had been sandblasted away by a tool the side of a small town.

What remained was, essentially, the innards of a mountain, the exterior exposed by a force unimaginably more potent than any viable atomic bomb, remarkably leaving naught but some cracked bedrock and a few exposed veins of minerals and gemstones, along with a thin exterior cast of the cave that Vaile had dug.

“Uh,.. yeah, I guess so.”

Vaile’s shocked words just made the old man laugh louder.

“Everything in this damn shame of a world is so much more fragile and pathetically frail than things were back then. I can’t even go for a stroll without razing an entire forest from existence.” The old man looked over his shoulder and gestured down at something below and beyond him. Vaile bit the bullet and looked down, seeing a massive gash leading from where the old man stood to a place far in the distance.

As he had said, nothing remained there save for ruins and wreckage, the terrain blasted away by winds strong enough to not merely rip up the foliage, but turn it into mere toothpicks of material scattered to the winds.

“Well… That’s something.”

“This is why I rarely ever get up and go about the place.” The old man said with a shake of his head. “Can’t even open my mouth without atomizing a not-so-insubstantial portion of the world around me. Damn shame it is, to lose all of that stuff.”

“And yet, your mouth has been open for a while now.” Came a female voice above Vaile’s head. Vaile looked up, froze for a moment, and then looked down before regretting that action and looking forward.

“It took a bit to get used to, but I’ll admit I was a bit rusty.”

“Of course, father.” Said the woman as she dropped down to the level the old man was on, floating in place above the sheer drop.

“Anyway, why don’t we come in and talk about things?” asked the old man. “You will invite us in, yes?”

Vaile didn’t have it in him to refuse at this point.

…

As she entered the small, artificial cave, she almost turned her nose up at the constructs that were there within. Wood. Not even good wood, just some cheap, bargain-bin trash wood, formed into furniture and just left in a place that she and her father would be meeting with Lord Vaile in.

It was beyond atrocious, and beyond insulting. How could anyone expect her, her father, or even Lord Vaile to ever use such trash? It beggared belief, and it filled her with rage. She would find the bastard or bastards that left such crap-tastic furniture here, and she would make them understand the meaning of ‘pain’.

“I’ll change out the furniture if you don’t mind.” Lord Vaile said as he put the tacky wood constructs away in his Item Box.

“Oh, just let me toss them out." Said a dragon who had transformed into a more human form and was wearing a butler’s outfit. “You need not waste your time with such garbage.”

“Well, they were mine, to begin with, so….” Lord Vaile said, which caused everyone besides himself to pause in shock. The dragons’ gazes met, and they all looked at the butler.

“A-ah… I see…”

“Eh, don’t worry about it.” Lord Vaile said, wiping away the grievous slight that had been made inadvertently as if it were nothing. “They’ve been taking up space, not that I have a limit, ad I’d been meaning to get rid of them but never found the time to do so. I’ll just toss them later.”

With the last piece of low-quality furniture gone, out came something that she would have expected Lord Vaile to be using instead of that trash from the beginning. It was all still rather plain, but the wood was leagues higher in quality than the compacted sod that the previous pieces had been made of.

“I’ve never seen that kind of wood before…” Monarkea muttered in a voice louder than she had intended. Lord Vaile apparently overheard her and replied that it was made of Drakinoak.

“Drakinoak?!” screamed a dragon who was outside and had overheard.

“Yeah,” said Lord Vaile as he finished putting the last piece into place. “I figured that it would be thematic.”

Monarkea looked over at her father, who, for the first time in one hell of a long time, had a genuine smile of joy on his face. She knew the old man was ambitious and avaricious, hoping that by locking her and Lord Vaile together he could gain control over the Alliance and access to treasures owned by other members of the Alliance, but he had apparently forgotten to factor in the countless priceless, unique, and utterly potent and remarkable relics that Lord Vaile had lying in his Item Box.

“Greedy bastard.” She thought as she looked back at the wooden furniture. “Still, though, your ambition will lead to me getting what I want as well, so I’ll do what you want for a while longer. Soon, though, your ambition will see you dead, and will see my rise in your place.”

…

Vaile sat down and gestured for the two dragons-in-human-guise to do the same. The old man sat down first, and the woman followed suit afterward after repositioning her chair to be closer to him. He wanted to sigh and shake his head, but he didn’t as he did not wish to cause any more annoyances than needed.

He knew where this was going to go, and he fully anticipated that this would gradually devolve into some kind of attempt to have the woman (whose name he still didn’t know, by the way) become his wife at best, and his owner at worst.

“Well, shit.” He thought as he kept a disingenuous smile on his face. “Here we go again.”