When Silk woke up she felt sluggish and exhausted. She still felt a sense of dread, although at the moment her scrambled brain couldn’t remember what the source was.

With a groan she sat up on the surprisingly soft bed, trying to figure out where she was. The first thing she noticed was that the others were in the room with her, much to her relief.

That relief, however, was short lived when she noticed the last person currently in the room with them.

Shade Dragon Vuthe de Thal sat next to the window in an ornate chair, reading a book while holding a glass with red liquid by the tail. Despite the majestic image that presented, Silk could only feel panic and horror, the urge to run screaming from the room.

„You can relax, I won’t hurt you”, Vuthe said without turning to her. Silk was perplexed, she wouldn’t have thought the girl could notice her freight, as she wasn’t even looking at Silk’s panic stricken face.

Vuthe chuckled softly, an almost musical sound. „I don’t need to look at you when the fear and panic is flowing off of you in waves. It would be impossible to ignore, even if I would try to“, she explained, finally closing the book and turning to Silk, giving her a friendly smile.

To Silk this smile looked more like the deceiving smile of the devil, inviting her to sell her soul.

Yet, despite her panic, she did manage to work through what Vuthe had said, which dimmed her panic a little as she tried to work through the implications.

„Uh… What? The fuck you talkin‘ about?“, she asked, confused. She felt totally out of her depth and more tired than she had been in a long time.

„Ah“, Vuthe said with a knowing nod, „I forgot you had no concepts of aura, despite your rather ingenious way of communicating through them with each other. I’ll be honest, I am quite impressed.“

It slowly dawned on Silk that all their strengths meant nothing in front of this girl, this dragon, simply by how much she knew.

Vuthe cleared her throat and settled herself a little more comfortably. „As dragons we have instinctive control over our auras. Auras, in general terms, are projections of one's soul, a physical aspect of an ephemeral phenomenon. As such, Auras cannot be destroyed, although they can be harmed, but they can influence the world around us in indirect ways.“

She waved her hand and an image of herself shimmered into existence in the middle of the room, which looked and felt identical to Silk’s senses.

„If you are trained in their use you can influence the senses of others, such as I have done in my little demonstration. At no point was any of you ever in danger, all I did was fool your minds into thinking you were living a nightmare“, Vuthe continued and Silk’s panic piqued for a moment.

If she could do that just with a wave of her hand, what kind of real destruction could she sow?

„Given time and training all of you will be capable of similar feats. And you will also be able to read our auras. In general, the most useful aspect of your aura is the fact that you can sense and feel surface emotions and thoughts. If you perfect that skill with enough training, you can pierce even deeper into the aura of another, without them realising. That is how I immediately knew what the other me planned when I first got out of the car, although this weird link did add to it. And it was also how I knew that you and Micheal weren’t really in it. I could feel your doubt, your cautiousness, your fear. And that enabled me to present myself as someone much stronger than I actually am“, Vuthe finished, then took a sip of her drink.

„Wait, hold up. You are telling me that was all just a show? Then how did you take Scythe’s punch like that without being knocked out for an hour or so?“, Silk asked, incredulous. While certain aspects did make sense, she was still confused and didn’t know how to handle all that.

The dragoness thought for a moment, „Scythe… Well, I do suppose the name is fitting…“, she mumbled, then shook her head and returned her attention to Silk. „It wasn’t all just a show. I am very powerful, but making you perish with just a word? That is beyond even me, normally. Maybe Vixus might be able to do that, they seem to be much stronger than they led on, but I would not be able to do it. I was correct when I said I could take all of you on by myself. While you are certainly quite strong, you have never learned how to augment your body with magic. Something we will be teaching you, should you want to learn.“

Silk looked askance at the dragoness in front of her, „Why would you teach us? We did just kind of try to murder you.“

Another melodic chuckle ran through the room, „Yes, you did. However, I would much rather be friends than enemies. Not only is our situation by all the laws of the universe quite impossible, but we could also use your help. I won’t expect you to follow orders, or even agree with us on anything other than not killing anyone, at least for the time being. The only thing I wish for would be a mutually beneficial agreement. We have only been back for three weeks and there are many things we still need to deal with, including finding a way for our people to be integrated into human, or at least earth’s demi-human, society. Unlike you, we had a kingdom to take care of when we returned, and our subjects are not exactly suited to be part of this civilization.“

Silk quirked an eyebrow, „Wait, so your claim to be a Queen wasn’t just total bullshit?“, she asked, slowly relaxing a little more. She didn’t detect any lies in the other dragons words, but honestly she didn’t expect any. She seemed very similar to herself, with an instinctive aversion to lying.

To her surprise Vuthe nodded tiredly, „Indeed. I am Shade Dragon Vuthe de Thal, Dragon Queen of Thelvadore, Savior of Uterin, Conqueror of Satien. I am responsible for the last five thousand survivors of Thelvadore.“

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Confused Silk looked at Vuthe sideways, „Five thousand survivors? You came here with so many other people?“

„Yes. However, that is not that important right now. What is important is our current situation“, Vuthe said, waving a hand around to indicate all the people present.

Silk grimaced, once more reminded of the gulf of power between them. “Yeah… We didn’t have the most relaxed time over there. Fucktards treated us like experiments. We all had to suffer a lot. But between you and me, Scythe had it the worst. Not because she got the worst treatment, she might actually have the best experiences in that regard, but she didn’t take Clusters treatment all too well. Ever since she kind of just… did things”, she shrugged with a cheapish look on her face, “Nobody of us really wanted to stop her. I don’t agree with her methods, but she got us this far. I know we aren’t good people. But they weren’t good either.”

Silk gave Vuthe a look of determination, “I’m not sure what your goal is, but we aren’t going to apologise for what we have done.”

Vuthe studied her for a moment, then shook her head. “Nobody is asking you to. At least nobody from our group. We know how you feel, we had some very unpleasant experiences ourselves”, she said, then sighed, “Honestly all we want is some time to relax. But it appears life really hates us. Or Abyss is trying to piss me off again. Either or… Anyways. We just want to relax a bit, and figure out what the hell is going on with the cloning. It should be impossible.”

Finally feeling a little more relaxed, although still cautious, Silk smirked, “Well, impossible is just a term people use to be lazy.”

Despite herself Vuthe chuckled, “Mostly true, yes. Although impossible in this case means that reality itself, or rather the way things work, should make it impossible. The same way you can’t be at two places at the same time, the same way it should be impossible for clones to exist. Yet, here we are.”

Raising an eyebrow Silk looked at her, sideways, “What do you mean with how reality works?”

“Well, it’s kind of similar to physics or chemistry, as in there are laws that govern how the world works, obviously. However, due to magic, a lot of these rules are very fluid and bendable. As far as I know there are only two ironclad rules that can’t be broken by anyone, including gods”, Vuthe began to explain, but was interrupted.

“Wait, hol’ up lady, what do you mean gods?”, Silk asked, obviously concerned.

“Oh… yeah… You don’t know about those, do you?”, she gave Silk a cheap smile.

Silk shook her head, “No, we don’t. Does this have something to do with this weird god power I felt in your presence? Are you saying…?”

To Silk’s surprise Vuthe took on a pained look and didn’t answer for a moment. When she finally spoke her voice was small, “Yeah… I’m a Goddess. I don’t like it, but it is what it is. Keep it to yourself, please?”

It took Silk a moment to take in that piece of information and work through it, her mind refusing to understand the sentence. When she finally did get it she felt a shiver running down her spine. No wonder they couldn’t do anything in the face of a goddess. She had lots of questions, of course, but Vuthe’s tone told her that she didn’t want to talk about it, and she wasn’t about to piss her off again, after they finally managed to get at least some basic groundwork done.

Vuthe looked genuinely pleading, as if this troubled her a great deal. Silk didn’t entirely understand why, but she could imagine that being a God or Goddess painted a target on your back. Personally she didn’t much care for gods, and she could see that being a broader issue. But with her power, why would Vuthe be worried about that? Silk would be hard pressed to find someone on Vuthe’s level of power, so she should be fine, right?

Sighing she shook her head, “This is all crazy… First we wake up in another world, then we need to fight a piece of shit government, then when we get back not only do we have clones, but one of them is a fucking goddess. What the shit has my life come to?”

There was a little humour in her voice, but not much. Vuthe dutifully chuckled, regardless, nodding sagely in support of her little outburst. A moment later Silk continued, “Aight. I can keep it to myself, but if you truly are some kind of goddess, I want something from you.”

“That’s fair”, Vuthe answered with a brilliant smile that made Silk feel… weird. “What is it that you want?”

“Can you heal Clusters… uhm… medical issues? She had to suffer a lot in the Labs and it left her… unable to reproduce”, Silk explained, carefully picking her words. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed, but she didn’t want to spill the details. It wasn’t her story to tell.

Vuthe gave her a long look, then looked at Cluster. “I can try. No promises. Since I’m not a healer I’m not sure it’s a good idea to mess with injuries like that. But I do have a good healer in my camp. However, we should wait until they wake up to discuss it with them. Especially Cluster, of course.”

Inwardly Silk sighed in relief. She did agree with waiting for the rest to wake up, but the fact alone that she would try was good enough for her. Cluster’s condition had really messed with both Cluster and Scythe for a long time, so maybe for once things would go their way.

Silk and Vuthe continued to talk about many things, while waiting for the rest to wake up. The first to do so was Bullseye, who nearly immediately tried to strike down Vuthe. Only once Silk explained the situation to him did he relax.

Grunt was after that, and he was surprisingly calm after he awoke. He actually thanked Vuthe for teaching them their lesson without hurting them.

When Cluster woke up, she cared little about Vuthe and much more about Scythe, who had yet to awake from her slumber. While Grunt, Bullseye, and Vuthe talked, Silk took Cluster to the side and explained to her about Vuthe’s agreement to help her.

She wasn’t surprised when Cluster immediately refused, if she hadn’t talked to Vuthe herself Silk would probably have done the same. She had to admit to herself, she still didn’t really trust the other group, but it was their best chance.

It would probably take a while to convince Cluster otherwise but she knew that once Scythe knew of the option she would definitely do her best to convince Cluster to accept.

Finally Scythe awoke. She took one look around, before pouncing on Vuthe. The others tried to intervene, but a burst of presence, or maybe aura, Silk wasn’t really sure, from Vuthe stopped them cold.

Scythe kicked Vuthe into the next wall, which surprisingly held firm. Vuthe huffed, getting her balance, and was ready once more when Scythe came again, trying to smash her head in with her fists.

To Silk’s surprise and confusion she did nothing to counter the countless attacks, only evading or taking the hits. If she tried to tire Scythe out, she would have to keep this up for a long time.

Then, suddenly, Vuthe retaliated, a punch landing squarely on Scythe's chest, slamming her through a wall, opposite where Vuthe had smashed into a wall herself, and deeper into the mansion.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to settle this before we can continue. I doubt she will listen to me unless we both get this out of our system”, she told the others, who just stood there, not sure what to do.

Before anyone had a chance to reply she wandered off like she was on a Sunday stroll.

Silk looked at her friends, but they just looked back with confusion. Neither of them had any idea of what was going on, but they didn’t feel like Scythe was in danger. Maybe they just had to sit this one out.