Zahra awoke the next day to a feeling she had not experienced in more than a decade. What she was feeling was, to put it mildly, a rapid increase in her authority over the realm she dwelt in, but accompanied with a not so insubstantial amount of rather enjoyable euphoria. She could feel the reach of her power expanding and covering more and more of what the savages had turned into a near lifeless desert, and she could feel that entire sections of the map that had otherwise been inaccessible to her power were now ripe for her intervention.

She realized that she was correct in assuming that Vaile would find some kind of loophole to exploit and allow his meddling in the war, but for the life of her (or rather, un-life of her), she could not figure out what he had done. She swept her near omniscient gaze over the places that should have been beyond her reach, gazing down from above like the sun beating down on the world. What she found only made her even more confused.

Where she could have sworn the unidentifiable objects had been (mostly due to rough guesswork) she found only scorch marks and the occasional loose limb and bit of mangled meat. She could piece together that some kind of explosive was used there, but how exactly was Vaile able to send someone or something into those dead zones where everything that was even remotely loyal to him would just fall unconscious at best and outright die at worst? It did not make any sense at all! What kind of creature did her beloved have up his sleeves that was not only powerful enough to avoid falling to the effects of the Objects, but also sneaky enough to avoid not only her attention, but that of all the other members of The Alliance?

She kept shifting her gaze over to the edges of the few areas that she could not assert her dominance over, hoping to see what Vaile had been doing that would allow him to strike these damnable creations of an unknown source without ever leaving the safety of the capital. Her eye darted about, checking every inch of the immediate area around the blocked-off locations, but nothing could be seen except the occasional bird of varying size.

It was only after another of one the objects were destroyed in a fireball visible from beyond the boundary of the object’s field of influence that she began to piece the puzzle together. Vaile had to be using some kind of creature that the barrier did not expect and work against to deliver a bomb of some kind to the target, and after she looked a bit harder at the sights that her ‘eye’ had recorded she realized what was going on and how Vaile was skirting the rules she had set up for him to follow.

Birds. Birds were the answer to the question of how Vaile had been delivering explosives to the objects. As she thought about it, it made a lot more sense than she had expected. The barriers were able to allow creatures that were not technically monsters into them, such as animals and even Rhynalonts, so it made sense that someone could use that loophole to deliver deadly cargo directly to their target. Birds were also much smarter than most people gave them credit for, especially corvids, but while corvids did not live around and in the Dominion or the desert there were still a great many other birds that could be called upon, both native and imported.

She still had no clue that, due to the long line that led from powerful Tamed Beings to the modern avians, most birds were about as smart as a relatively intelligent 4-year-old, but that was knowledge that she didn’t need. She had to hand it to Vaile; he certainly did follow the letter of the law, if not the spirit of it. Still, this revelation had opened up a massive can of worms that needed to be addressed. She had refused to send her military into those dead zones after an entire army was lost to the barbarians. Said army had crossed the boundary and immediately fallen unconscious, only to be killed by the Desert/Sand Elves where they lay.

She had assumed that this was due to the barrier being indiscriminate, but now she came to a very different conclusion. It was a hypothesis that needed to be tested, and she knew just the people for the job. You see, her hypothesis was based on a singular fact; that the entire army she had sent was made solely of mummified warriors and constructs, without a single living person or animal amongst them. She was now going to test if only those who could be called ‘monsters’ would be effected or if she was correct in her assumption all those years ago and that everything of hers was targeted indiscriminately.

…

“So here we are.”

Ratams stood atop his chariot, his undead steeds just a few centimeters from entering one of the few surviving barriers that still stood defiant, despite needing to be protected by the Desert/Sand Elves.

“Go forth and show that you still have some loyalty to the Pharaoh left in those blackened hearts of yours.”

A group of barely clothed people stepped forwards, mostly due to the blades at their backs. The chains that bound them were not there because they were slaves, as such a thing was beyond illegal in the Solusand Dominion. Not, these were some of the few people in the Dominion to have given in to their darker side and committed acts so unspeakable that they deserved naught but death. Their chains led back to a large, Sphynx-like construct that was a decent distance behind them. If they did fall unconscious upon entering the barrier, the construct could give a quick tug and almost instantly snap their necks. If they lived, they would be forced to remain in the barrier for a day or so until the experiment was completed.

“Move!” Ratams shouted, and the blades pressed against the bare flesh of the prisoners, urging them forwards until they crossed into the area of influence created by the objects. Minutes passed, then an hour, then three, then ten. By the time that the sun was back in the same place that it had been a day ago, the experiment had been fully completed and Zahra was rather embarrassed that she had not figured this out sooner.

The prisoners were still very much alive, although they were horribly sunburnt and dreadfully hungry and thirsty, but a quick tug by the construct permanently ended their need for food and drink in but a single motion. Zahra’s hypothesis was confirmed, and it was time for the Solusand Dominion to stop relying on Vaile to solve their problem and start going on the counterattack themselves.

For the first time in a century, a call was sent out to all corners of the Dominion for living people and animals to join in on a great war to reclaim what had been stolen. For those who fought and distinguished themselves, land was to be given and wealth bestowed, with some being able to reach new heights in the ever-fluid caste system that governed the nation. It did not take long until the recruiting centers were swamped with more men and women wanting to take up arms than they knew what to do with.

And, watching from beyond the skybox itself, the God of the Desert/Sand Elves knew that it had fucked up.