“You pulled a rather risky stunt, my Lord.”

“I am aware, but like everything in life, it was a calculated gamble and/ or risk.” Vaile replied as he looked up at Monarkea. “It just so happens that, occasionally, I am good at math. Not always, but occasionally.”

Monarkea grumbled as she moved further into the mountain caves that still bore the mostly-replaced remains of a former Dwarven garrison. However, while it was clear that traces of the old occupants remained, the deeper you went into the former Dwarven Under-Fortress the more you could see that the new residents were hard at work making their lesser kin do a bit of redecorating.

What, did you expect that the dragons would be doing the remodeling themselves? No, no, no. That work would be beneath them by a massive margin. Better to let dragonborn, kobolds, and draconewts, among others, do the work so that they could spend their valuable, precious time doing other, more valuable things, such as burninating all of the villages and turning their occupants either into dead bodies or treasure to add to their ever-growing hordes.

Hell, why not both?

“So, while I like what you’ve done with the place, we have other things to discuss besides architectural design choices.” Vaile’s voice had turned serious, and Monarkea took notice.

“So, was he replaced?”

Vaile shook his head, not outright denying the possibility, but denying that it was the only one that could be true.

“No, of that I’m not sure. I just know that something along the lines of those glitchy monsters is here and may or may not be in some way, shape, or form attached or connected to what could be Vyviir.”

Monarkea stopped walking and stared down at her Lord with a look of confusion.

“In Draconic, please?”

Vaile had to pause himself and let the previous sentence process in his mind for a bit before he got it.

“The line is, ‘In English, please’, but as ‘English’ doesn’t exist in the normal sense here and your kind hate to use Common/ Basic unless you absolutely need to, I’ll let that slide.” He then turned to the colossal dragon and tried to simplify his words a bit, as he had indeed been a bit obtuse.

“Okay, so Vyviir may be replaced, or he may not be. I can’t tell at this point, and that little shard of oblivion I brought out only confirmed that something was very off. Now, I’ve never used it before, but, if what it had been screaming into my mind was true, then Vyviir, at the very least, has had some kind of, well, let’s call it a parasite, attached to him that may either be controlling him or may be putting him into an altered state of mind.”

“Then we need to rip it off and kill it!” Monarkea nearly roared before catching herself. If she had spoken too loudly, she may have inadvertently caused a civil war to occur. “Where is it, how is it attached, and how do we remove it?”

Vaile shook his head.

“Those I don’t know. We need a bit more info before I can make any attempts to even try and find such a thing, plus we don’t know how Vyviir, in his potentially either altered state of mind or fully replaced body will react to this. As such, we need to keep things quiet while we investigate further. While the longer we wait may cause him to lose himself further, we can’t just act until we have sufficient knowledge and means to affect the outcome in a meaningful way.”

“So,” Monarkea snarled, “we just hope nothing changes for the worse?! He tried to kill you!”

“And he failed miserably.” Vaile retorted. “Besides, that would not have killed me, more than likely. I’ve since boosted my own survivability since the time when Chuu accidentally tossed me to my death into a wall.”

“SHE DID WHAT?!” Monarkea screamed, alerting everyone around.

“It’s neither here nor there, and I had caught her while she was furiously smashing a few assassins that had been sent after me into paste and back again. She was really pissed, and that anger likely resulted in her little rat brain being hyper-fixated on smashing any nearby thing into oblivion and back.”

“She still killed you!” Monarkea nearly screamed before she stopped and had the cogs inside her mind start moving a bit differently. “Wait, if you died, how are you here?”

“Magic, technology, and fuckton of luck. Plus, I’ve died, like, what, a few hundred times before coming to this New World? I thought that time would be permanent, and when it wasn’t I made damn sure to take some preventative measures just in case some random event saw me slam into something at over Mach 2 again, more or less.”

Vaile’s jovial tone seemed at odds with the nature of the conversation, and it was having the desired effect, which was to deter Monarkea from going any further down that line of dialogue.

“Fine, fine, I’ll just ask them in the next meeting about how they murdered you. Then again, I think that already happened before this next one, so… Where were we?”

“Talking about the ‘you know what’. But let’s take that discussion elsewhere, okay? Too many eyes, ears, and gossiping mouths.” Vaile said while sending a glance here and there.

Monarkea’s eyes scanned around along with the rest of her senses. “Damn.” She thought, “Already there are those who are gossiping about the unneeded…” She sighed and nodded to Vaile. “Lead the way, my Lord.”

“Oh, no, no, no.” Vaile waved his hands and shook his head as he replied. “I don’t know where anything in this place happens to be, so you lead the way, my dear.”

Although he may have intended it as a joke, Monarkea didn’t perceive the term ‘my dear’ as such, and while she could not visibly blush, she did the only thing she could do that was the draconic equivalent and let out a heavy puff of superheated air from her lungs, which Vaile saw, immediately realized the significance of, and proceeded to regret causing in the first place.