Vaile slept like a baby for a good 12 or so hours in his secluded spot, but he spent a great deal longer asleep in a very different place altogether. Yes, by the time he awoke, Zahra had long9 since calmed down from her rage and located him, then had proceeded to transport him somewhere far from the front lines. Vaile was still fully clothed, his mask still stuck to his face and impossible for an outside force to remove, but to Zahra that wasn’t a problem. She had Vaile right where she wanted him, far away from any danger and with his head resting on her lap.

If she could only remove that pesky mask and take in his features, then she would never ask for anything of him ever again (with the possible exceptions being a kiss and a child). Vaile did eventually wake up from his nearly 24-hour long slumber and the moment he opened his eyes they locked with those of Zahra. While his mask did obscure his eyes in a similar fashion to a certain comic book detective who had a thing for bats, Zahra was seemingly able to determine that yes, he had awoken.

As Zahra beamed down at him, Vaile tried shifting his position, only to discover that his body below his shoulders was trapped between the coils of the giant fucking cobra that Zahra had been using as a chair.

“Zahra, please tell the snake to let me go.” Vaile asked, but his words were met with a shaking of the Pharaoh’s head.

“I think not. You’d just run off and try to destroy more of those unfathomable objects, putting yourself in even more unneeded danger. Speaking of which, how is your wound healing?”

Vaile didn’t quite understand what Zahra had meant by him having a ‘wound’ until he remembered the mysterious assassin whose head he had punched in after it had stabbed him in the shoulder. Silently, he pulled up his status sheet and was pleased to discover that the minor damage inflicted upon him had since been perfectly regenerated from. Better still (at least in his eyes) his attire was also undamaged, a thing he had to thank the auto-repair buff he had gotten added into the outfit. This thing he was wearing was damned expensive, and it was likely that the components needed to make and/or repair it under normal circumstances no longer existed. He could deal with injuries, but irreversible damage to his favorite clothes? Not much was scarier than that…

“Ah, that…” Vaile answered. “The wound I incurred has fully healed, my health pool is back to max and my clothes are undamaged. Besides, I’ll be more careful next time, so please-.”

“No!”

Zahra’s shout drew a few eyes from inside the ornate throne room she and Vaile were in. Vaile himself couldn’t get a good look due to the body of the snake and that of Zahra herself obscuring all but a fraction of his view, but what he did see made him wonder slightly if Zahra had indeed been thinking only of her people. From what little was visible to him, Vaile could see that this place was swanky at a minimum and absolutely and overwhelmingly ostentatious at a maximum. Zahra seemed to pick up on this, and after she calmed down from her one-word declaration of refusal, she told Vaile the truth.

“You are wondering if I demanded this grandiose marvel that is my palace from my people, yes? I did not. I was content to rule in a place far less flamboyant than...” she moved her arm to gesture to the area in its entirety, “this. But as my nation grew, so did the love my people had for me. I solved crisis after crisis, ended hunger, thirst, homelessness, joblessness and wiped away so many illnesses, physical, mental, and national. Was it any wonder then that they, after seeing that I wanted to do naught but help them become something greater than they were before, chose of their own volition and desire to make this place for me? Even I will admit that this place is gaudy and over the top, but what kind of ruler would I be if I refused to accept gifts given to me out of love and support for my benevolent and glorious reign?”

“Fascinating.” Vaile said in a mostly monotone voice. “Now can you please let me up? I don’t particularly like the idea that I am being confined ‘for my own good’. The last five people who did that wound up unintentionally chasing me away from their domain, and I would really hate to have to run from you as well. After all, I can get out of here whether you want me to or not, and therefore it is in your own best interest to avoid giving me reasons to bail and not want to see you ever again.”

This gave Zahra some cause for concern. She mulled these words over in her head for a bit, still keeping Vaile’s head on her lap and the rest of his body bound tightly by her ‘pet’. It took her only a short bit of inner contemplation until she realized that there was indeed something to be said for not making her beloved so distrustful of her that he would simply run away and leave her ‘alone’. Thus, she acquiesced to his request, but on her own terms.

“Very well, I shall have my pet release you. However, I do desire that you stay here in the palace for a while longer. I will not force anything else too grand upon you, and neither will I demand you join me in bed, but I do require that you try and avoid conflict while you are here, both with my people and the invaders. I can risk neither you being harmed by a citizen of my nation nor by the hands of one of the damnable barbarians that seek to harm all of us. I shall deal with those savages myself, so please, please avoid personally fighting them. I cannot have you being injured again on my watch.”

Vaile smiled a cheeky grin under his mask, but Zahra did not seem to notice (thankfully).

“So, don’t go to the front and fight them myself, right?”

“Do not leave the capital of my nation and do not leave the palace.”

“So, I can’t leave the capital or the palace, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And I can’t personally go and fight them, yes?”

“That is correct… What are you planning?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Vaile said dismissively.

Sighing, Zahra had her ‘pet’ release Vaile and then had General Ratams escort him to a private room which had been prepared for him over a century in advance. She knew he was plotting something, what with the way he had asked those questions, but she could not figure out what it was.

…

Vaile checked that Zahra and Ratams were both asleep and then walked over to the window. He withdrew a small box from his inventory and called a distant descendant to one of his many, many animal-type Tamed Beings over to him.

“Take this and bring it there.” he said while pointing out a place on a map. “Once you get there, look for an object that you cannot fully comprehend and drop this box right at its base. Then get out of there as fast as possible. Do you understand, Archimedes?”

The white dove cooed and flew off with the box as another fifteen birds of various types and sizes began to congregate near Vaile who began singing a version of a very old song.

“Step 1; Put a Bomb in a Box. Step 2; Give a bird the Box. Step 3; Wait for the bird to deliver the Box. That’s the way you do it.”