With their little ‘vacation’ over, Kain and Alexis had to get back to business. While they could both easily count on legions of living and unliving beings to handle most of the minutia of governance while they were out and about, there were certain things that only they (or their children) could do. One of these was the act of using the Menu that the citadel’s pair of thrones provided.

Kain honestly felt a little rusty, as it had been one hell of a long time since he had gotten around to dicking about with this thing. Although, to be fair, being in a coma aboard a flying fortress-city or being away from the throne for other reasons tended to do that, so he wasn’t entirely to blame. Now, however, was a time that allowed him to see what new things could be done with the Menu. At long last, it was time to get back to the roots of what had started all of this so long ago.

Sitting himself down in the big, comfy throne, Kain brought up the Menu and scrolled through the seemingly endless numbers of updates that filled the semi-transparent screen, eventually getting so fed up with them that he actively searched for a ‘delete all pending notifications’ button. Thankfully, the Menu was smart enough to realize how close Kain was coming to simply dismissing it and doing everything manually, and it erased the vast majority of the messages itself to avoid this.

With that issue dealt with, Kain began to refresh his memory regarding the old mechanic that he was fairly certain that he had long since outgrown. Most everything was as he remembered it, except for a few new buttons that brought up some rather interesting sub-menus.

Kain turned to his wife, who was seated next to him, and asked her a question that would, quite possibly, change everything going forward.

“Hey, Lexi, do you see that option right there?”

Alexis looked where Kain was pointing on her own copy of the Menu, clicked a few buttons, and then scowled and dismissed what she had brought up. She obviously was not happy to see that particular potential option. This caused a bit of confusion to well up inside of Kain, as he had thought that Alexis would have been absolutely overjoyed to have the option of reviving the two fallen Vampire Houses, starting with their founders.

Alexis let her face relax and turned to her husband, a look that mixed displeasure and acceptance covering her face.

“House Vanile and House Meier would most assuredly not be a good thing to bring back, though both for entirely different, yet similar, reasons.”

Kain still had some generic memories about his old, cringy, chuuni days. Among those, he remembered that hose two Houses were strange, but in their own ways, though he could not remember why they would be so dangerous.

“Please, my dear,” Kain said with a smile. “Refresh my memory, if you would.”

Alexis took a deep breath that turned into a sigh, showing how stressful this whole choice was for her.

“House Meier had… issues. This was even before you went to sleep all those centuries ago. Of all the Houses, they alone refused to try and hide. This was, ultimately, their undoing, as their unique quirks that separated them from the other Houses either got to their heads or they were all just a bunch of morons from the start.”

Kain laughed in reply and asked, “What quirks could possibly give them such confidence to unanimously make such a terrible decision?”

Alexis looked incredibly disappointed in herself and that House when she replied with “Immunity to sunlight, Light Magic, holy stuff and the like. Also, when exposed to such things, their skin sparkles like it is made of gemstones. Oh, yeah, and they have a weird trait of somehow being absurdly attractive to teenage and young adult girls. Don’t ask me where the latter two traits came from, as even I don’t know.”

Kain’s face contorted as he processed the information that he was given. It then struck him as to why that House was named the way it was, and also how dumb he was back then. Urgh, he was such a fucking cringe-fest back then!

“As for House Vanile…” Alexis said, trailing off. “Well, they are where the whole ‘Bloodsucking Insect People’ thing went. They were… really weird… All of them were bound via a hive mind, all of them were equally androgynous and looked exactly the same. Likewise, they all spoke about themselves in terms like ‘we’, ‘us’, and the like. They were.. well… both unique and somewhat bland, and they sucked ass at infiltration, and they were easily destroyed by fire and even by soapy water.”

This also caused Kain to facepalm. Of course House Vanile, or perhaps, House ‘Vanilla’ would be as generic as they would come, but with some nasty side effects of their own. Utterly generic and indistinguishable in appearance, with no individuals of any kind and just one massive singular existence... of course they were completely ‘Vanilla’! Well, maybe something like a special off-shoot of Vanilla, if you counted in the various other traits.

“I can see how they would be dangerous, then. We wouldn’t want to turn public opinion against the Midnight Aristocracy by having a single revived House turn all of this nation’s daughters into sulking emos that hang out in the forests all day. Let me guess, they also had a bad habit of somehow attracting werewolves?”

“Yes, actually,” Alexis replied. “Of course, both they and the werewolves were hunted to extinction. As it turns out, most mortals tend to not like it when their daughters want to bang wolves. Or vampires that sparkle and are also a bunch of emos, for that matter. Either way, they are too dangerous, and I’m honestly not sure why I even tolerated them for as long as I did.”

Kain nodded. “Same, same. And House Vanile is a liability due to them potentially seizing control of our little ‘not-so-secret terror weapon’ and running amok, right? Hive-minds are bad enough, but a… devouring swarm, I guess? That would be a nightmare of an entirely different degree…”

Alexis nodded. “Yes… although it pains me to admit it, I am actually quite glad that those two Houses were eradicated. But let’s be clear, Darksol avenged them, and so they deserve to sleep in peace, no?”

“Yes, and not just because they would throw a spanner in the works and potentially ruin everything we’ve built up till now.”

“Right. I’m glad you agree. Now, shall we use this thing to do something productive, or are we just going to talk about that which should remain dead and buried?”