“With respect, I insist we keep moving, General…Sir…Lady.”

Maiden Vajin set her tea on the saucer and glared rather pointedly down her snout, through bone-rimmed glasses with yellow eyes that reflected flickering lamplight. In the overcast twilight of the desolations between the Alliance and the Infernal Realm, those eyes were brighter than the single lamp, boring holes into any who dared look up.

“I will remind you that the princess is currently taking her second post-supper, pre-slumber nap. Waking her prematurely would result in me flaying you each alive and serving you up for dinner with my favorite risotto.” Maiden Vajin’s voice gained a hard edge, though she continued in a whisper that hardly carried. “Furthermore, as we are all currently defying the wishes of the Grand Emperor of Demons in accompanying the Princess and are outside the Infernal Realms, I am no longer a general in the Sleeping Army. Simply a Lady In Waiting and a traitor.”

The pair of soldiers looked one at another, Commander Kummer passing Sergeant Thrawb a worried glance with his one good eye, the troll and ratling knowing the threat to be true from past experience and dinner invitations. They also both noticed - genuflected on the floor as they were - how the Wolvine maid’s tail wagged happily behind the chair she sat on.

“Pardon our mis-speaking, Lady Vajin,” Sergeant Thrawb groveled, his rodent lineage accustomed to subservience. “Our concern is indeed that the entirety of the Sleeping Army we once served has been mobilized. Even now they are posed on the border a mere handful of miles behind us, only flimsy treaties and ancient dilapidated magics holding them from entering this desolation and capturing the princess. The Abomination Engine has been activated and a thousand slaves gathered for the Bloodening. If we could just make it into Alliance territory…”

*shrrrtk*

Both troll and ratling flinched backward as a clawed foot sliced furrows into the carpet between their heads. It happened so fast that peering back at Maiden Vajin after, she had not appeared to have stirred.

“We will move, stay, live or be served with risotto at the pleasure of Princess Procrastia.” Those terrible glowing eyes burned upon two hardened soldiers, promising dread to all defiance. “Am I perfectly clear?”

“Yes, Lady Vajin,” they both muttered, quietly shuffling backwards out of the antechamber and taking care to muffle closing large ivory doors upon leaving the princess’ tent.

“Vaaaaaaaj! Why isn’t my bath prepared?!”

“…” Vajin said, setting her tea on the table and standing, immaculately straightening her maid uniform and glancing perturbedly at the carpet now sporting claw marks. She would require the seamstress fix that tonight. And yet she allowed a tiny smile, climbing the stairs to the fourth floor of the tent and Procrastia’s private traveling quarters. Vajin’s thoughts drifted west where the Sleeping Army prepared for a war that would otherwise never happen. All over the whims of a Princess currently pouting beside an empty bathtub.