“So,” Vaile continued, “what do you do for fun around here anyway?”

“For… fun?” Monarkea asked, her head tilted a bit askew.

“Yeah.” Vaile looked around as he folded the newspaper. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe that you get your kicks from rearranging your treasure all day, every day.” Vaile then leaned in a bit closer. “Or is fun outlawed here?”

Monarkea now understood what he meant.

“Well, this place is remarkably dull most of the time, so I, for one, get my ‘kicks’ as you call them from toying with the Races.” She paused after that, a part of her wondering if Lord Vaile found offense with that course of action.

Vaile, of course, did not. Perhaps due to his connection with the countless more… unethical and immoral Tamed Beings under his ‘control’ he had gradually lost more and more empathy for the average Joe from the Races. Besides, almost every time he came into contact with one of them that was not connected to his Tamed Beings (or their descendants) he had experienced nothing short of annoyance at best and attempted lethal force at worst.

He wasn’t too upset about Monarkea toying with them now. Hell, he hadn’t really been that much for people even before he started playing that game, and his choice of profession and his choice of attributes to buff that profession had not exactly helped him stop being a social pariah in the virtual world.

Or this new one, in fact, so long as you didn’t count the Tamed Beings and those connected to them.

“So, how exactly do you mess with them?” Vaile asked as he rested his chin on his hand and his elbow on the table. “Typical raiding and pillaging, or something more creative?”

“I would certainly call it…” Monarkea still didn’t exactly know what Vaile thought of her and her kind’s treatment of the Races, but she could at least tell that he was not as concerned about it as she had first feared. “Creative…”

“Oh, do tell.” replied Vaile as he spoke in a tone that only slightly hinted at his piqued interest.

“Well, for a while it was simple looting and pillaging, but that grew boring rather quickly, so I took up a different manner of doing things.” Monarkea now was at least 50% sure that Vaile couldn’t give a rats ass about the numerous war crimes and atrocities she had committed, but she was still going to go slowly to make sure she didn’t dive in too deep and get on Vaile’s bad side.

“Such as?”

“Well,” Monarkea continued. “first up was trying to build some glorious civilization for a while before snuffing it and everyone in it out.”

“That must have lasted a while.” Vaile said as he sat up a bit straighter. “Was it fun?”

“For a while. But doing that took time and effort and really was rather boring for the majority of it. The only real truly ‘fun’ parts were the first few decades and the inevitable razing of the place. That went on about three times before I decided to cut that game out.”

Monarkea looked to see Vaile’s response, and to her surprise and delight, Vaile appeared to at least have curled his lips up a little bit. With that bit of encouragement, she continued her explanation of her methods of finding something to pass the time.

“After I did that for a while, I found my current manner of getting some fun out of this dull Domain.” this time it was Monarkea who leaned in. “Creating, and eventually destroying, Heroes.”

Vaile let out a small huff in appreciation for this. “Okay, this I’ve got to hear about. Is it the standard stuff you’d find in a fairy tale or something a bit grander?”

“Well, it started off simple enough, like in a typical fairy tale.” Monarkea replied as she let her memories take her back to a simpler time. “But that, too, got boring a bit too fast, and so I resolved to make ever more interesting, and ever denser, Heroes.” She laughed a small bit before adding the cherry on top. “Of course, they were all too foolish to realize they never were ‘Chosen Heroes of the Goddess’ and were instead just a bunch of fools who were dancing to the tune of their executioner.”

“Now that is funny.” with a little laugh of his own, Vaile lightly slapped his leg with his hand. “So, is there currently one in the works, or is he, she, or they already out and about?”

“Oh…” Monarkea began to think for a bit. “I… I honestly forgot about that dense, stupid bastard.”

“How dense are we talking about?” asked Vaile. “And how stupid is he?”

Monarkea looked Vaile dead in his eyes and replied in a serious tone. “He is the densest, dumbest motherfucker you will ever have the displeasure of meeting, and that’s saying something because I’ve dealt with a lot of dumb and dense motherfuckers.”

“Yeah,” Vaile asked, clawing for a concrete example, “but how dumb and dense of a motherfucker is he?”

“Dumb and dense enough to know the difference between the name of his girlfriend that does not exist and my own, despite them sounding the same and being off by only a few letters, yet also being unable to see that she and I are one in the same, even when I go from this form to my true form in front of him.”

“And you made no attempts to hide this from him? None whatsoever?”

Monarkea shook her head.

“Holy fuck, that is dense and dumb…” Vaile muttered. “Please tell me he is at least smart enough to know good gear from trash. That would just be pathetic if he couldn-…”

Vaile looked at Monarkea’s still stoic expression before the both of them began to laugh, neither being able to contain their mirth any longer.

“Dear fucking Lord that is a dumb piece of shit!” Vaile continued to pound his fist onto his leg. “I’m sorry, but I have got to see him all kitted out in random garbage yet still steadfast in his belief that he is dressed to the nines!”

“I’ve only heard the stories from the lesser draconids, but if their descriptions are anything to be believed, he looks fucking hilarious.”

“Oh, oh!” Vaile half yelled and half laughed. “When he finally gets that big, climactic battle with you, can I watch you toss him around like a rag doll?”

“I was hoping you’d ask that.” Monarkea said with glee as she pictured the inevitable scene. “I’ll try not to break him too quickly.”

“You’d better not!” Vaile insisted. “I want to have front row seats to this. Even if only to see firsthand how he deals with the big reveal.”