Monarkea laughed triumphantly as reality shook down to its core. This attack that she and the Alliance had orchestrated, though slightly improvised, had been a resounding success.

The Wardens would not be killed off by this, not by a long shot, but they would be dealing with a nuisance that they would never be able to eliminate from now on. They had foolishly retrieved their little booby-trapped shard, and now they were going to have to deal with the new perpetual wound that they had now unintentionally acquired.

The tremors that rippled through existence were being felt by all, and she was overjoyed when she saw the many, many looted statues of the various gods of the Races cry tears of blood and emit pained shrieks. The sight and sound was glorious, and while her Domain was not on the front lines of the eternal war, those that were now had a few more openings to exploit.

The eternal stalemate may now have finally begun to reach an end, and with the damage that her little bomb had likely unleashed, the odds would, at least for a while, be on the side of the Alliance. She could not help but congratulate herself over and over for her success and her unintentional foresight.

Vaile’s addition to her collective hoards had been an unexpected yet welcome surprise, and that Axis would be so useful was another, and while she had indeed hoped that Axis would fulfill his duty as a vessel for a shard of the Wardens, all so that she could break it, she had never imagined that things would play out this way. She had only intended to trap Axis in a prison of metal, transmuting him into a perpetually living statue of solid platinum, only to melt it down and mix it with other trapped people and create a mountain of tortured, screaming coins filled with the fragmented wills of thousands of people, not use him as a heavy, spiked liver-punch to the Wardens themselves, after all.

This was, by far, the better path, though. Every blow to those bastards was a blow that needed to be delivered, regardless of any other plans of minor note. This was how they would win, and how they would break free of the New World and…

She didn’t really know what she would do when she was free. She assumed that she did, somewhere deep inside of her mental core, know what she wanted to do when the prison she and so many others were in was shattered, but right now she honestly could not remember why she even wanted to get out in the first place, only that it was of the utmost importance that it happen quickly and with minimal loss of members of the Alliance.

Still, while she and (for the most part) all the others didn’t know or understand why they wanted out and what their objective was once they were out, that didn’t matter in the short term. The Wardens needed to be wiped out, and the New World needed to be broken open down to its most basic level and escaped from, and that was all that she needed to think about regarding that.

As she looked around and marveled as reality temporarily took on a state like that of a world made of fractured glass, she laughed maniacally at her success and knew for a fact that others were doing the same. She just wished that she could see the looks on the faces of the Wardens as they frantically worked to keep the prison they ‘ruled over’ from breaking apart, even though she knew that they didn’t have faces.

She would just have to content herself with the despair and fear and shock of the Races as they watched reality almost crumble away to dust. She would need to make a recording of this, if only to give her something to laugh and find joy in once the Wardens managed to patch the New World into a (mostly) normal state again.

And so, with mirth that could only be found in such a situation from a being like herself, she pulled a pilfered piece of tech that she got from a rather unfortunate Player that had come to the New World and teleported to a place outside of her lands and began filming. All of this needed to be recorded for posterity, and to be copied and sold for a quick bit of coin.

She popped in and out of place after place, relishing the emotions and expressions on display more and more with each new place she viewed until at last the world began to heal and the fun ended. As the last tremor faded and the fractured space returned to its original state, Monarkea was left scowling as the Wardens wiped the minds of the Races that were loyal to their vision.

That these lesser beings would not remember the failures of their gods and their gods’ masters was a thing she hated with every fiber of her being, but for now, she was unable to do much about it. When the final stages of the Long War came to pass, she was certain of one thing above all.

These little sheeple would remember all that had been stripped from their memories, and they would, in their last moments, understand the truth of things. They would curse their gods and their gods’ masters and all that preached their words to them and beg the Chosen of Lord Vaile to let them escape oblivion.

And while some in the Alliance would certainly allow them to recant their faith, repent their sins, and join them in the final push for escape, she had other plans for those that flocked to her for salvation. The Races were, as a whole, save for those already loyal to those Chosen by Lord Vaile Himself, all undeserving of any status beyond either being toys, livestock, or breeding partners, and even that later one was debatable, and as such, they would not be worth the hassle of saving when the final parts of the escape began.

Those that did chose to beg her and the dragons for salvation would only be able to escape if they willingly allowed themselves to be transmuted into treasure for the rest of their lives, as only then would their lives be worth anything of any value. But all of that was for much, much later, and she now had to focus on making sure that this film would be preserved, copied, and processed, and not necessarily in that order.

Monarkea looked skyward as the entire new World began to experience a sudden and world-covering rainstorm, and she couldn’t help but find it all so amusing. The Wardens were always stuck in their belief that they were untouchable at best, and only able to suffer minor setbacks at worst, and now their belief in their own success had been challenged in the most world-changing way that was possible at the time.

And knowing what Lord Vaile had been doing up till the point that he was whisked away by the dumbass Axis, Monarkea felt deep down in her heart of hearts that the Wardens would only suffer even more humiliations and damage before the Long War finally came to an end.

She could hardly wait.